If there's one thing we've learned it's that even a pick six from Bubba McDowell won't help if the coaches decide to stop winning. I do fault NASA administrators somewhat for responding to that attitude at the top by trying to turn the agency into a glorified orbital FedEx company, using in existing technology and equipment to make a profit off other nations (and companies) satellites without the need to innovate. IMHO, that's why Columbia was still running missions instead of being in a museum, and without a replacement fleet that's going to be a recurring tragic problem in the future. Meanwhile, China's stated intention to win a second Moon Race will apparently be accomplished by default; America has no plans to go to the Moon OR Mars any time soon, though, once again, that wasn't NASAs call, just one they're forced to accept. It could be interesting to see how the UNs declaration of a demilitarized Moon holds up with no one to contest the issue and a Permanent Security Council member able to veto any UN action against them.

Regardless, there is no true status quo; innovation and achievement continue apace whether or not those successful in the past choose to continue participation. Our last major innovation was either the Moon landing or the internet, but, much as it pains me to say, America largely seems a spent force in that regard unless public opinion changes dramatically. We will remain a world power just as the colonial powers did, but not a superpower. By the close of the eighties there was an almost palpable sense that Reagans all or nothing gamble on restarting the arms race to bankrupt the Soviets left us simply hanging on hoping they collapsed before we did. It worked, and paid surprising dividends in rapprochment after nearly prompting an inadvertent thermonucler exchange in '83, but also left a budget crisis that has made large scale scientific spending difficult when not impossible.

All the excitement over the LHC could've been coming from North Texas ten years ago if voters had seen THAT supercollider as more than a wasteful and unnecessary boondoggle preventing tax cuts and deficit reduction. So instead an "old Europe" that is anything but is leading the way, China is traveling to the moon, Japan is on the brink of the first commercial fusion reactor. None of that is really the fault of anyone at NASA, but I'm not optimistic anything will soon happen to reverse THAT status quo. America has become that against which it once rebelled, making a doomed attempt to hold back progress on nearly every front because most people seem to think that hopeless goal easier than continuing to take the risks true leadership entails.