I remember a growing media drumbeat that Apollo, space travel, etc was immoral spending and a waste of money. We should be shoveling it into urban America. That spending was moral. I remember Ralph Abernathy driving (supposedly!) some covered wagon down to the Cape to protest during one of the last Apollo launches. It got almost as much if not more coverage then the Apollo launch. The media was tired of “space” and wanted to sell that to the public. It also had too many white shirted white geeks on TV, that’s not cool either.
A real-life revenge of the nerds. Or as someone at NASA said, a great day for the squares.