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Yes, I would suggest that we first discover why these things are happening and address these problems before we waste more money on space projects.

No need to expend much effort on that. You know why it is happening as well as I do. It is because it makes the companies doing those things (selling out) the most money in the least amount of time, avoids risk, and generates relatively large financial rewards for a relatively small number of people (who are in charge of the sell-out to begin with).

Trouble is, that process is self-limiting. After you've sold out the last infrastructure to foreign bidders and offshored the last US job to cheaper labor markets, then what do you do? You're left with an empty shell that soon collapses for lack of a reason to exist. So then those who have robbed the place have to take off for the hills before those they sold out come get them and drag them off to a necktie party.

"Private industry" that sacred mantra of uber capitalists everywhere (like me), is in the process of eating it's seed corn, and, eventually, eating itself alive. There is no investment in long-term, risky ventures, simply because the business model practiced today says, don't do that, it doesn't have a fast enough payoff. There have been no new oil refineries built in this country since the 1970s because the industry doesn't want to take the risk of never having those operate, and it taking too long for a return on investment. Better to keep the old stuff running and hope for the best, which is fine until demand exceeds supply and/or a hurricane comes along and knocks out a good portion of your production (sound familiar?). Investing money in people and things is a long-term deal, and business today seems to look as far out as the next quarterly profit statement, no further.

I think the reasons our industrial infrastructure is decaying are rooted in big government. Too many demands from government, too many potential hazards from tort lawyers, too many environmental restrictions, too many class-action suits, too many demands and restrictions on hiring and firing women, minorities and homosexuals.

It is so much easier to do business overseas it is a wonder we still do any manufacturing in this country.

The problem feeds on itself. As US industry shrinks, there is less fodder for the lawyers and so they get leaner, meaner, and are even more aggressive towards the remaining victims. In such a hostile environment, is it any wonder that corporations think short-term?

There is no investment in long-term, risky ventures, simply because the business model practiced today says, don't do that, it doesn't have a fast enough payoff. ==

It is true. But all socialists of the world critisize "private industry" same way. What then to do?

It seems so that the goverment adgencies has to do long-term investments in technologies (thermonuclier reactor for example) and do fundamental science (another thing needed but never done by "private industry").
SO no way to get rid of NASA, goverment laboratories, funding the university researches and so on.
All of those are long-term and no profit in near future.

How "private industry" can do those I cann't imagine?