In article ,
Jonathan wrote:
Not quite. For most of JFK's reign, and the early part of LBJ's, it had
*some* importance -- as witness, not least, the significant slice of the
federal budget it briefly got. It still didn't get a *big* share of the
President's time, but it did get a modest amount. But neither the money
nor the importance lasted; both were in sharp decline toward the end of
LBJ's presidency.

Of course it quickly declined, the goal was to land in the moon.

Which hadn't happened yet at the time of the decline. The *goal* was to
re-establish clear technological superiority over the Soviets. Once the
US began to clearly pull ahead in space -- which happened with Gemini, not
Apollo -- the bizarre combination of political forces that supported
large-scale spaceflight came apart. Actually, it was unsustainable and
was already beginning to unravel, but the collapse of the Soviet image of
space superiority killed it. Apollo was running on fumes and momentum by
the time it actually reached the Moon.

SSP would take quite a bit longer...

Which means that a large-scale program directed at achieving it is a
political impossibility. A commitment on that scale won't happen until
the uncertainties are greatly reduced, and the time scale shortened to
yield first tangible results within 5-6 years.
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