Fair enough. All nations have budgets for a multitude of programs and can work simultaneously on different goals. Obviously, they all draw from a single resso

Fair enough. All nations have budgets for a multitude of programs and can work simultaneously on different goals. Obviously, they all draw from a single ressource, money, and therefore priorties have to be weighted carefully. Overall I'm not getting many good arguments on how to handle this except "Why, things have improved, haven't they? Give me Star Trek" and "Bigots!". I suspect that this is because Space fans are on average less affected by the above mentioned acute problems, more likely to benefit professionally from investment in space programs, and generally appreciate the nature of space missions: A difficult task, but with a clear solution through engineering.