The space program inspires alot of kids to stay in school and obtain higher education in hopes of becoming astronauts, but then they grow up and realize that only a few people in a hundred billion ever become astronauts.

They realize that human spaceflight is a fantastic technological achievement but ultimately futile, and they begrudge the tax dollars spent to give a few people, already successful, even more opportunities that they are forever denied. Human spaceflight is also the most visible part of the space program, which in this respect, is probably a serious mistake.

If people want to believe that the space program (America's space program, and all the satellite organizations in other countries) is actually worth all the money being spent on it then it will have to change. And change it is. The Orion spacecraft is probably going to be a much more resource-effective way to launch either people or payloads into space. When you reduce the resources needed to get there, you will have more resources to do other things.

Will Orion make it to Mars? Probably not. I think people will see the light long before that and use it for more productive purposes.

Such as...

1. Launching telescopes that search the Oort cloud for non-periodic comets that might impact earth.
2. Launching arrays of interferometer telescopes.
3. Launching new technologies that have never been tried.

Where will humanity go in the 21st Century?

WE'LL GO TO THE STARS!!!