One of the greatest tragedies I’ve witnessed is how we keep chopping NASA in half. When I was growing up (the 70s, so it had already been cut in half once from your childhood) NASA had spacelab, and manned orbits, and was starting the probe program and was working on the shuttle. Now we’ve got probes. Makes me want to cry.
The ugliness was most reflected in Walter Mondale, who led the fight to dismantle the moon program. He spouted the mantra that the money would be better spent here. This to short-changing the shuttle program, and ultimately our ending of the manned space program under the current administration.