Man on the Moon

I grew up on Walter Cronkite and the race to the moon. Actually, I can remember John Glenn, project Mercury, Gemini and the tragic deaths of Gus Grissom and the Apollo One crew.
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Yes, I can see the fiscal sense of President Obama cutting funds for our return to the Moon. But, I do think there is a better way than privatizing the space program. When the United States went to the Moon, we didn't try and claim it as U.S. territory. It's time to internationalize the exploration of space. No, I don't want to partner with China or any other dictatorship. After all, there are plenty of democracies that have shown an interest in having a space program. Just NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese could easily mount a joint effort to put a scientific base on the Moon and then push on to Mars. I don't care if the first manned mission to Mars has a crew made up of people from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paris, France, Mumbai, India, and Cape Town, South Africa. And if the first person to stand on the surface of Mars makes remarks in Japanese, well, I don't care.