Both our comments and rebuttals are on record, and I invite anyone still interested to read them again and make up their own mind. I suspect opinions will break down, as usual, along party lines.

However, now that I've got your attention, allow me to provide you with some unsolicited advice. You can take it or leave it.

TB, you are in the position, perhaps through no fault of your own, of being faced with the ultimate Darwinian challenge. Your world is changing and you are being forced to adapt. Regardless of the causes of those environmental changes, the fact remains that you are the one who must adapt to it. And apparently you are having trouble doing so.

It's rough being in the position that what you work hard at and do very well is simply no longer in demand. The market, for whatever reason, simply does not find you useful anymore. You have become redundant.

No, this is not a slam, it's exactly the same position I found myself in a few years ago, forced to retire prematurely when I still felt I had much to contribute.
In my case, the root cause was that society had determined it could no longer afford my services as a municipal technocrat. Whether the society made the correct assessment as to my value may be debatable, but that is irrelevant. The point is, I had to make...other arrangements.

In your case, the generous government subsidy (let's face it, pork) for space exploration and the lucrative contracts that supported the space industry are drying up, and that industry can no longer justify spending its own capital resources developing a technology when there is no realistic possibility of a return on investment. Its the free market at work, you, of all people should understand that.

Your position is precisely the same as mine. Even if we are justified in believing that it is misguided and short-sighted of society to invest so much developing talent and infrastructure and then simply letting that capability wither on the vine while abandoning a worthwhile effort, it doesn't really matter. We must deal with the world as it is, not as it should be.

Whatever is wrong with the world, and whoever is responsible for it, it isn't my fault and it isn't yours.
Hell, we can't even agree what the problem is, much less its source and who to blame! To recognize the problem, and even to work to persuade society to implement our solution is perfectly natural, even noble. But to obsess about it and to overwhelm others who are not to blame with that solution is, at best, counterproductive. At worst, its destructive; even self-destructive.

TB, you're a writer, and a good one. You have a good reputation in your industry, and a highly developed political model of how it is integrated into society (even if I don't believe a word of it!). If you really want to implement what you believe, there are more suitable forums to do it in. We already know what you want, and everyone here has already made up their mind, one way or the other, about it.

I hope I haven't come across as smug or patronizing, but I can't really see any other way of expressing what I sincerely believe. Whatever is going on in the world, we had nothing to do with it, and there's nothing we can do about it anyway.

Fight if you can, die fighting if you must. But do it where it can do your cause some good. This is no longer the respected space blog it used to be, those people have all tired of the endless conflict here and have gone. There is no audience here you can reach, to either influence or to rebut.

Yield to the logic of the situation.