I explain this by the lack of competition. Rest of the world is not making anything comparable to what NASA does. Only Japan's Hayabusa is remotely close to a t

I explain this by the lack of competition. Rest of the world is not making anything comparable to what NASA does. Only Japan's Hayabusa is remotely close to a typical NASA mission. Nobody can say 'our nation is lagging behind in planetary missions' so politicians are happy and prefer to concentrate funding on more pricey things having less real scientific impact, like manned spaceflight, where there is really a lag to be fixed.