Saturday will mark 1,500 days since the Space Shuttle touched down for the final time. Grounding human spaceflights was always supposed to be temporary as we made the necessary transition to a new generation of spacecraft, operated by American commercial carriers. Likewise, paying for seats on Russian spacecraft to send our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) was always intended to be a stopgap.

Had Congress adequately funded President Obama’s Commercial Crew proposal, we could have been making final preparations this year to once again launch American astronauts to space from American soil aboard American spacecraft.

WIRED Opinion About Charles F. Bolden Jr. is the 12th Administrator of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). As a NASA astronaut he flew to space four times aboard the Space Shuttle. Bolden served for 34 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including 14 as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Office.

Instead we are faced with uncertainty—and we will continue to be so long as Congress resists fully investing in Commercial Crew.

What we do know for certain is that every dollar we invest in Moscow is a dollar we’re not investing in American businesses in Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota or any of the 35 states where 350 American companies are working to allow the greatest country on Earth to once again launch our own astronauts into space.

It’s as if we keep ordering expensive takeout because we haven’t yet set up our own kitchen—only, in this case, the takeout meals are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. Just recently, NASA was left with no other choice but to write a $490 million check to our Russian counterparts so that we can get our own astronauts to the Space Station. It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress can and should still fix this by investing in Commercial Crew.

Every dollar we invest in Moscow is a dollar we’re not investing in American businesses.

To understand how we got here, it is worth revisiting our recent history: The Space Shuttle had a 30 year run like none other. Four times I was blessed with the opportunity to travel to space aboard this marvelous spacecraft. There has never been a vehicle quite like it: a reusable spacecraft, with the beauty of an airplane, the capacity to carry eight astronauts to space and a 60-foot payload bay. The Shuttle’s three-decade long run was nothing short of remarkable.

As WIRED’s readers know well, technology evolves over time. The Shuttle’s first orbital spaceflight—STS 1—was launched on April 12, 1981. Four months later, on August 12, 1981, the very first IBM PC was introduced and it would, as WIRED’s Christina Bonnington wrote, “...ultimately transform people’s opinions of computers and spur their adoption. It would be difficult to overstate [its] role.” STS-1 had a similar influence on human spaceflight. As groundbreaking as was the original IBM PC or the first Macintosh (released a few years later, in 1984), today’s modern applications and challenges call for newer technologies and devices. The same can be said for spaceflight.

As we seek to send our astronauts farther into deep space than ever before—as far, in fact, as an asteroid placed in lunar orbit in the 2020s and Mars in the 2030s—we need to build a new generation of spacecraft.

In 2004, President Bush made the very difficult decision to retire the Space Shuttle after an incredible run. Although this was not an easy decision, it was the right one: It was the recommendation of the board investigating the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia and it was endorsed by many people in the space community, including myself. But it was not meant to be the final decision.

From his very first days in office, President Obama made it a priority to return human spaceflight to American soil. Five years ago, speaking at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, he laid out a visionary strategy for space exploration in the 21st century. The centerpiece of this strategy was a Journey to Mars that would culminate with sending American astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

To complete this Journey to Mars, the President asked NASA to further its work on a spacecraft and launch a system that would successfully bring our astronauts into deep space. Today, that spacecraft, Orion, has had a successful (uncrewed) flight into deep space and that launch system, the Space Launch System (SLS) is repeatedly passing major milestones.

While NASA focused on how to get our astronauts to deep space, the President’s plan called for us to work with commercial partners to continue to get our astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. Doing so would be a “two-fer” in that it would allow NASA to focus on deep space, while empowering American entrepreneurs and innovators to build a new commercial market in low-earth orbit. The plan was called Commercial Crew.

In addition to the considerable economic benefits of Commercial Crew, there is also a strong fiscal case to be made. On a per-seat basis, it costs approximately $81 million to send an American astronaut to the Space Station on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. By comparison, it will cost $58 million per seat to send our astronauts to the Space Station on Boeing’s and SpaceX’s spacecrafts, once they are certified.

Even with all these benefits, Congress has consistently underfunded the amount requested by the President for NASA’s program to return launches of American astronauts to the Kennedy Space Center. Since 2010, the President has received approximately $1 billion less than he requested for NASA’s Commercial Crew initiative. During this time we’ve sent $1 billion to Russia.

Space travel is complex, but this choice is simple: Do we invest in ourselves—in our businesses, our ingenuity, our people—or do we choose instead to send our tax-dollars to Russia?

We are the country that kissed the moon. We’re the country that’s roving Mars. We’re the country that continues to reach new horizons, including most recently, Pluto. We ought be able to get our own astronauts to space.