Maybe I'm out of touch, it seems to take a lot longer to get things done and get something flying into space than it used to. I don't think we can be world leaders with projects like the SLS that never get off the ground anywhere near the expected date. Seems like we used to take more risks or have less bureaucracy or ???
>Polls both by USA Today and Gallup have shown support for the moon landing has increased the farther we've gotten away from it. 77 percent of people in 1989 thought the moon landing was worth it; only 47 percent felt that way in 1979.
>Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much on space, indicative of a lack of commitment to the spaceflight agenda.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...
More like we had a Cold War to win via technological showmanship.
Today's world has more important, more fundamental political problems to solve (not that we're doing a good job on those either, but regardless). At the same time:
> it seems to take a lot longer to get things done and get something flying into space than it used to
It's never been easier to "get something flying into space" thanks to, surprisingly, private industry. Walking on the moon may be a different story, but significant progress has been made getting both objects and people into space.
"Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968" - $25.4 billion (1973)
"The Space Launch System (SLS) is a US super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle, which has been under development since its announcement in 2011. It is the primary launch vehicle of NASA's deep space exploration plans,[12][13] including the planned crewed lunar flights of the Artemis program and a possible follow-on human mission to Mars.[14][15][16] SLS replaces the Constellation program's Ares V launch vehicle of 2005, which never left the development phase." - For fiscal years 2011 through 2018, the SLS program had expended funding totaling $13.999 billion in nominal dollars.
In 7 years Apollo had crewed flight. In 7 years SLS isn't even off the ground, and that is after the previous project never finished.
So, how do we gain public support for funding these missions? Honestly, while 'war' may be an answer its not a good one.