At some point the government of the nation stopped caring about the exploration of space and started caring about massive scale projects that would support the space industry.

The entire program has become a cancer of political and industrial interests, and scrapping it to start over is not a terrible idea. It's the lack of starting over that has me concerned.

The exploration of space is without a doubt the future of humanity, and it seems to me the US no longer sees itself as leaders of humanity, at least in this regard.