1) Does it really make sense that after going to the moon a doze or some times (6 times perambulating!) 53 years ago, we...just...stopped?! We never went further into our Star Trek future than that? Like it was Really just about "Being The First" and once we had defeated that, well, heck, I guess we've done all we came here for. I mean, can you really believe that, that all the benefits of technological & manned space exploration would yield to: economy and industry; human society, culture and metaphysics; US soft power; global unity and esprit de corps--we just stopped!? Seems kind of hard to believe that after those heady days there was it seems a steady wind down to our situation today, where: our commercial airflight tech has essentially not step-changed in 50 years; we haven't put people onto any other celestial body (or even further out than Earth orbit); space propulsion is still based on rockets (now they're...not like condoms!--I guess that's something?); and as Peter Thiel (I suppose, love him or hate him?) has said: "We were promised flying cars, all we got was 140 characters" I'm sort of not buying it and thinking either (and this will surely gratingly rub some folks greatly the wrong way and be likely explained away by the simple mundanity of bureaucracy and the incompetence and short-sightedness of government, and "low real-world utility" of manned space flight): our culture is way more pathetic/deceptive than it appears, or there was some secret space program that doesn't get shared with the proles.
and
2) Was it, therefore, really better that we were "First" and not "the Soviets". If there has been two poles competing continuously for title of "Biggest Pole In Space" {heh ;) social trope I guess?} then...might that constant state of State competition been better "for all mankind" than one where the game was quickly won and over and done?
Thinking on this as watching. Interested in what you think.
I am told that at mid-90s NASA (or at least JPL?) one might see (not-so-)motivational posters saying "25 years: what were your dreams then, of now?"
* cf note that only the "spam in a can" went home; unmanned missions by both sides continued well after Apollo. cf Fast Cheap and Out of Control
Also note that the man who famously said "we choose to go to the Moon" got cancelled well before anyone ever got there. (His soviet counterpart was also cancelled, after which Roscosmos —up until NASA first started— stopped flying female cosmonauts)
It's expensive and difficult to sail to Greenland / North America / Pitcairn / Antarctica. And, once you get there, it's expensive and difficult to establish a colony. And, if you find anything of value, it's expensive and difficult to return it home.
Then you have all the domestic issues. Perhaps take a listen to "Whitey on the Moon" to understand why some people felt that there were better ways to spend money.
For All Mankind (up to the point I've seen) mostly glosses over the money issue. It is a charming fantasy.