The space program isn't really a great example of long-term thinking though. Its crowning achievement was the Apollo Project, which only took about eight years

The space program isn't really a great example of long-term thinking though. Its crowning achievement was the Apollo Project, which only took about eight years -- less than the time it takes Boeing to design a new airliner, for instance. Once we'd got to the moon we figured out we didn't have a long-term plan for what to do when we got there, so the money dried up and wound up getting spent on one short-term boondoggle after another: Skylab, the Shuttle, the International Space Station et cetera. NASA's budget and primary focus change frequently, and every time there's a grand new plan to do something new (a new launch vehicle or a trip to Mars) the money will evaporate soon afterwards leaving behind either nothing (e.g. the last few Mars plans) or a crippled project which never really does what it was originally supposed to do (e.g. the shuttle or the ISS). Meanwhile, huge slices of the NASA budget are spent idiotically thanks to Congress (e.g. the spreading of NASA facilities over various states with powerful senators). NASA has had some great successes (the occasional huge success is pretty much unavoidable if you gather thousands of very smart people and billions of dollars) but as a poster child for government's ability to take a long-term view it's pretty dim.