keep in mind also that we only went to the moon to one up the russians and claim victory over the space race. while the technology created around it was useful in other ways, there's no practical reason to send a person to the moon, especially in the 60s. it was just a game of tag to show that we could. it was ultimately pointless and for propaganda and once we had that victory it was time to stop playing around in space. after the cold war ended there was genuinely no reason to continue the space programs in earnest, which is why a dozen or so movies came around at the time to convince people to go to space camp and care about nasa, they desperately needed funding which ultimately they never got. eventually this lack of interest lead to india visiting the moon again before we went back, and us being stuck on a space station for over a year because we just don't give a shit whose building this stuff, and are too politically stubborn to ask for help from the russians who are on the same space station as us. america has just fallen very dramatically. we weren't the sole surviving super power because we defeated the russians in the end, we just ignored our collapse for longer than the soviets did. the post cold war world is generally worse off than the world of the space race and early cold war, and america did not emerge victorious, but simply was being "weekend at bernies house"'d through the last 50 years of our history.
United States