"Six months after Funk and Taylor completed their report, AAP bore the brunt of more than $500 million in Congressional cuts to NASA's Fiscal Year 1968 budget.

"Six months after Funk and Taylor completed their report, AAP bore the brunt of more than $500 million in Congressional cuts to NASA's Fiscal Year 1968 budget. The program, which for a time in 1966 had been planned to include some 40 Earth-orbital and lunar missions, shrank rapidly during 1968-1969. It was officially renamed the Skylab Program in February 1970. Between May 1973 and February 1974, three three-man crews occupied the Skylab Orbital Workshop in Earth orbit for a total of 173 days." For context, the US spent ~$110B (non-inflation adjusted) on military actions in Vietnam, 1965-72. To think we could have ceded Vietnam a few years earlier and visited Venus for pocket change (and potentially not had Nixon as a president)... the mind boggles.