"I don't know what is going on with this country; when Sputnik first flew, we went into a frenzy to teach a new generation of scientists and engineers. We resolved to put a man on the moon in 10 years. Our response to the current explosion of new technological progress abroad is not even tepid, it is completely apathetic." Snowislander
Thanks for that interesting post. The difference is in the 50's we still valued ourselves as a country and wanted our country as a whole to do well in the world. We placed promoted and helped pay for the prograns that would ensure we could compete. (On a side note, the new private competition in spacecrafts looks like a positive move).
Now the main objective is to increase profits for the reform minded oligarchs and to reduce the cost of American labor.
From what figures that I have seen on what Japan is spending on this project, the direct costs aren't even that high. I seem to remember that the official direct costs are roughly 200 million dollars, and JAXA's total annual budget appears to be around $2 billion. ( Here is a very neat pamphlet about JAXA, but it's large (3 megabytes) ).