All the articles I remember reading from october 1968 till june 1969 were extremely positive about our future in space.
Then, one day, in june 69, there was an article in Paris Match, about the cancellation of Apollo 20 and the probable cancellation of 19 and 18 too.
All the dreams were shattered at once; Apollo was an end, not a beginning.
This was known even before the first landing.
And ,yet, all books (even much later into the Shuttle era) about our future always had a special space section with lots of promising things for us. I kept reading them but had a growing suspicion.
What changed the whole thing was the need for immediate (money) reward becoming more important than the satisfaction of our curiosity.

Raoul