To be frank, across the whole lot of NASA, ESA and even the Indian, Chinese and Soviet space programmes, I had never once seen any achievement as an achievement

To be frank, across the whole lot of NASA, ESA and even the Indian, Chinese and Soviet space programmes, I had never once seen any achievement as an achievement for anyone other than all of mankind. More than forty thousand years of human civilisation have lead us to where we are -- even if it's a team effort by people alive today, they're standing on the shoulders of millions of giants and they're achieving this for all of us, living or dead as well as all future generations to come. This is actually why I never warmed up to Star Trek "Enterprise" (Captain Archer and friends) -- it basically presented itself as "Americans in Space", starting with the intro's repeatedly showing (exclusively) American flags. All the other shows didn't waste much time on modern nations because those were something mankind had outgrown: it wasn't even "us humans" anymore, the Federation spanned different species just like the UN today spans different nations.