And now to distract you from my typograpical errors, the Hubble Deep Field:
When's the last time you found yourself in awe of our exploits in space? I mean, really?
The whole program has become mainly a vehicle for expressions of multi-culturalism (every year we get someone who is the "first" of his her color/nationality/ethnicity/religion/social set to fly into "space.")
There are no plans to return to the moon, none to Mars, none to look at commercial exploitation of the asteroid belt, e.g.
Space exploration is as dead as our latest Shuttle crew, and it will remain that way until someone figures out how to make a solid buck from it, and governments (including and especially the U.N.) get out of the way.
Trying to give an honest answer, when I saw the Hubble Deep Field I was struck with awe. Then again, that might not qualify as our exploits. My layman's opinion is that Hubble has been good publicity and good science.
However, more to your point, I would agree that the national space program has stagnated somewhat. Even if you consider the moon landings a publicity stunt, which I do not entirely, the unity of purpose that nasa had during the Apollo program seems like a totally different NASA to me than the one of today.
It's kind of a chicken and egg scenario, in which NASA has no concrete goal to work towards so there is no solid support, but NASA doesn't receive the support nationally because to does not have one, over-riding goal which everyone understands. That's one thing the moon landings had that today's NASA doesn't, the public perception of doing something concrete.
Sure, they're doing things, even a lot of different things, even scientifically valuable things. However, there is a disconnect between what NASA is doing and the relevance those projects have on the life of the average person. Even if the moon landings were little better than a publicity stunt to shame the Soviets, that was something people could easily wrap their brains around. Everyone knew why we were doing, as it had direct connections to the Cold War.
So, in my layman's opinion, this is what NASA lacks today. People understand that NASA is doing things with our tax dollars, but there isn't an easily identifible thing it does that people can recognise, other than the shuttle. Now that the shuttle has had another catestrophic failure, this draws serious doubts into NASA's whole mission. I do not mean to lessen the sacrifice that the crew made when I say this, but maybe this will be a good thing for NASA in the long run.
I would wholeheartedly agree that private industry needs to be involved, and that until there is the potential for profit making space exploration will be limited. But at the moment, NASA is the big governmental program which is charting these new territories, as the opportunity costs for space travel are still too high in the private sector for anything other than manned probes. But, if we are going to have this federal program, what should it be doing? Watching spiders float about in a confused fashion?
What I think NASA could be doing ties in as neatly with national policy as the moon landings did with military technology, and that is energy policy. Energy policy is on everybody's minds, as much or more than the Cold War was in the late 50s early 60s.
In short what I think NASA should be doing is applying themselves towards one large and critical national problem, that of energy policy. I am speaking specifically about solar power satellites in geostationary orbit which beam down power in microwave frequencies. Though it is often said that our economy runs on oil, I would be more inclined to say our economy runs on electricity. We just use combustion for some specific things, but electricity is in every engine that is not powered by steam.
If NASA applied itself towards helping produce electricity, it is a tangible goal when the common man can easily understand. Not because the common man needs a dumbed down NASA, just the opposite. Rather it is something that everybody needs, which is to say energy. It gives them a reason to develop mineral resources near earth orbit, and a roadmap for jumpstarting private investment in the area. Energy production has a profit motive which the "pure" sciences to not. It also provides an alternative to nuclear enery generation even though I happen to support nuclear power, because uranium is a limited resource as with fossil fuels.
This is my layman's idea on how to make a buck from space exploration.
And now to distract you from my typograpical errors, the Hubble Deep Field: