To go to the moon required a huge infratsructure and a lot of money. Money that only governments offer for space flight. The manpower required to put NASA on the surface of the moon, and that within less than 10 years (from announcement until first touchdown it was only 8 years) required almost a whole country i.e. its most powerful companies (Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, IBM and much much more) to work almost 24 hours a day under big political and leadership pressure. That is something no private company has and not even NASA gets today. What SpaceX is able to do is within a very narrow range compared to Apollo and NASA. They might launch cargo sometime within the next 10 years to the ISS, and maybe, just maybe, by much money and help, humans to the ISS. But that will be it. If Europe, Russia and the USA don't work together, or if Obama does not assign NASA a real new goal and straight program, we won't see any manned missions beyond earth orbit. This is as safe as the Bank of England!
Huron_Serenity: forget about Shenzhou. Why are you so focused on it? The leadership in manned space flight goes to Russia anyway. The Chinese space flight program is not in a good shape at all. They launch too rarely. They flew only 3 times within 5 years. And their next flight is not going to happen until 2011, which is a gap of 3 years, and which all in all makes it only 4 manned flights within nearly a decade. They're just doing a propaganda show to show that they are also are able to do big things now (finally after many decades of testing rockets...). But the science is minor, very minor. Without partnership they won't be able to hold a candle to Russia, less than ever to the USA.
