It wasn’t all that long ago on this forum that a number of people were screaming for the de-funding of NASA and saying that nothing good ever came from it. I am not a big fan of NASA and frankly think it should have never been created but that is history. We should have continued with exploration and built a colony or base on the moon... but short sighted government and the whinging few stopped that. Now we have lost the ability to build the rocket motors that powered the Saturn 5 rockets to the moon and back and that is the real sad part.... had we, the United States, continued to lead the way into space we might have already settled colonies on the moon and have stations out in space.
You got that right. Our government has canceled program after program which could have created a whole new multi-trillion dollar economy larger than today’s present economy, and then they complain about not having enough money to fund government from the faltering economy. The U.S. launched the first prototype of the MOL (Manned Orbital Laboratory) in the 1960’s, but canceled the follow through with putting astronauts aboard a manned mission. This allowed the soviets to become the first to send up a manned space station. If the U.S. had followed through then, we likely would be producing enough products and services from manned space stations to fund routine commercial operations in space by now. Instead, now they are many days late and even many more dollars short while whining about the shortage of funds.