You're right, it does make me think. It makes me think we're broke and this is the kind of stuff that falls along the wayside when you're broke and you have to make cuts. Space programs, public television, the arts, ad nauseum. There are hundreds of programs that can make a case for themselves when times are good. Times aren't good anymore. Sorry.
If being great is valuable, and exploring space makes us great, and being broke prevents us from exploring space (thus being great) stop those things which make us broke. Unless of course, we can achieve the same valued greatness (vis a vis other cultures) by not exploring space.
This begs the question...does it matter who does it?
American enthusiasm for the space program was not for nothing.
How's that working out?
After all, we have the fattest poor people on the planet.
We're broke for a reason, and NASA isn't it.
We need to quit subsidizing the parasite class, and by that I do not mean the old or the genuinely infirm, but the millions who just suck the substance out of America without lifting a finger, and with no intention of doing so.
We need to fire about half of the Government, dump a pile of ridiculous regulations, and get back to producing our own stuff, for export if nothing else, so we won't be broke--individually, or as a nation.
We have exported jobs and factories for decades and quit making the basics.
I'd bet you and I could sit down with the Federal Budget, line item by line item, and cut close to 50 million a day in pork items for months and never touch NASA.
For now, the new American Dream is to find three different baby daddys and get child support out of one or two while collecting welfare and living in subsidized housing with a taxpayer paid cell phone, internet, and medical, utilities, and a food card.
As long as that is the dream, the moon will remain a bright dot in the sky for part of the month, and sooner or later our descendents will look out of their cave and wonder about it, all over again.