I'm not the one making the initial claim. I do agree with Tyson in that the reasons for the space race were "we need to beat the Russians" and when the US won

I'm not the one making the initial claim. I do agree with Tyson in that the reasons for the space race were "we need to beat the Russians" and when the US won the space race, the political will to continue with the dreams / expectations that the wasn't there to continue with that level of spending. I do not believe it was a "we are afraid of change, lets stop those things" but rather "we won, we don't need to spend on them despite the (opinion: positive) changes that they're bringing to the US (opinion: and the world)." With the economic situations of the 70s and 80s, it was a pulling back of funding. Things that cost money without any tangible gain to tax payers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA In the 60s about 4% of the federal budget was NASA. That dropped in the 70s and continued to fall with the occasional bump. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/inflation-rate-cpi https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... I believe had more casual relationship with NASA (and other 60s ideals) budget than the fear of "rapid change".