In the 80’s with the Space Shuttle:
They settled into a pattern of orbital research of zero-g this, zero-g that, zero-g cr*p with a wiffle-ball bat.
They did that for almost FOUR DECADES..! Didn’t push any boundaries at all.
Totally ridiculous, and exactly what you’d expect from the Post Office incarnation of space.
Lessay in 1903 the Wright Broz at Kitty Hawk just turned EVERYTHING over the Da Gummint:
You think John Glenn just a little over 50 years later would have made the first US orbit in 1962..?
Nope, it was the private sector that really got them there, and had airplanes been 100% gummint we would juuuuust now be talking about getting an American into space in 50 years, MAYBE.
Elon is a teet sucker but as far as gummint waste is concerned his folly is very, very TAME.
Nixon. He and LBJ screwed up the Vietnam War, and he refused to give NASA a clear mission. Nixon had a choice between ending LBJ’s great society program and funding NASA OR he could keep great society and gut NASA.
He chose poorly.
The other side of of this is that aircraft were a technology that was developed by private individuals and private industry pushed development and in 50 years aircraft went from being barely flying to supersonic flight.
Spacecraft, on the other hand, were developed by government and did not change for 50 years until private industry started getting involved for its own purposes.