AP Photo

The gold-class landing of the Curiosity rover on the Red Planet on August 6th was an awe-inspiring feat of human ingenuity. It was also a quintessentially American feat, as Dr. John Holdren emphasized in a speech immediately after Curiosity’s successful landing:

“If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space,” he said, “there’s a one-ton, automobile-size piece of American ingenuity...sitting on the surface of Mars now.”

President Obama similarly praised this event as “a point of national pride far into the future” and a symbol of “our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth.”

“In your face, China!” was the not-so-subtle subtext, as Michael Brooks pointed...