Why did society lose interest in space and sci fi in the early 2010s?

[CmdrShepN7]

I was just a young idealistic college student back then.

During the Summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year of college in 2014 a friend showed me a video game called "Mass Effect" and I was blown away by the universe, story, and characters that was created in this video game. As a "Cod bro type gamer" I also never seen a video game quite like it before. Role playing combined with cinematic storytelling. That blew me away as well. They were also playing the movie "The Fifth Element" on TV a lot during this time as well.

Another game that blew me away was this cute little indie game called "To The Moon".


Before space and sci fi had absolutely no appeal to me. Mass Effect gave me a sense of wonder of what might be out there in space. I also find out about an astrophysicist becoming more famous named "Neil Degrasse Tyson" and he only added fuel to that fire. Maybe "To The Moon" contributed to igniting this interest as well.

For some strange reason I associate space exploration and sci fi with the optimism of the 90s. Could nostalgia play a factor?

I end up finding out that Mass Effect was inspired by sci fi like "Babylon 5", Battlestar Galactica", "Firefly", "Farscape", and "Star Trek". I end up binge watching those. I then find out about all the space opera novels. I devoured space opera novels like James S.A. Corey's "The Expanse" and "The Culture" by Iain M. Banks.

I remember watching a video with a speech by Neil Degrasse Tyson where he lamented that society has not just lost interest in space but lost interest in dreaming of a better future.


I also get into games like "Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager" and "Kerbal Space Program".

2014 was really a cosmic year for me. That combined with "Cosmos" and movies like "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Interstellar", and "Big Hero 6".

I also remember the early 2010s as a vapid time.  Most students as well as wider society seemed more interested in reality shows, materialism, and partying.

Sadly I lost interest in space around 2016. During the quarantine I check out this show on Apple TV out of boredom and curiosity and it ends up reigniting my interest in NASA and space exploration.

Why did young people feel more of a need to conform during the early 2010s? Why not be athletic, fun loving, and yet smart like these badass people called astronauts?

[su27k]

I'm not sure society is that interested in space before 2010.

Which is OK, we don't need society to be interested in something for that something to make tremendous progress, like society is not interested in semiconductor either, but it has been following an exponential growth curve for decades. The key is commercialization, find commercial use cases.

[Blackstar]

I'm not sure I agree with the premise. It's very difficult to characterize "society" in any precise way. We're talking generalities. But one thing you could do would be to look at movie box office:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2011/

For 2011, two of the top domestic grossing movies were sci-fi: Transformers-Dark of the Moon and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I'd put five of the rest in the fantasy category (including Captain America: The First Avenger).

For 2012, it gets a bit harder, and I'd only put The Hunger Games in the sci-fi category:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2012/?ref_=bo_yl_table_10

For 2013, I'd put three of those top 10 movies in the sci-fi category:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2012/?ref_=bo_yl_table_10

But what you start to see there, and which could prove your point, is that comic book movies/fantasy really start to take over. Almost every year over the past decade, at least 2-5 of the top-grossing domestic box office movies in the US have been comic book movies, usually some part of the Marvel Comic Universe:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2014/?ref_=bo_yl_table_8

2015 had The Martian and one of those Star Warsy movies, as well as Jurassic World in the top ten. All can count as sci-fi:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2015/?ref_=bo_yl_table_7

I would argue, however, that the Star Wars franchise is really more fantasy than science fiction. There's two more of those in 2016 and one each in 2017, 2018, and 2019 (and Rise of Skywalker even made it into the top 10 for 2020, but we all know what happened in 2020 to make box office numbers go screwy).

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2018/?ref_=bo_yl_table_4

Comic book movies and franchises simply dominate the box office for over a decade. But that does not mean that sci-fi is dead, only that Hollywood shifted and public interest shifted as well. However, there remain a number of big-budget sci-fi movies and television shows in production or currently airing/streaming.

[spacenut]

Most of the public is not interested in space or spending money "in space". 

[KelvinZero]

I tried to find someone who had attempted to quantify interest in SF.. this one looked interesting.. though not very rigorous:
https://auxiliarymemory.com/2011/04/09/the-decline-of-science-fiction/

On the other hand:

Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Sales Have Doubled Since 2010
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/06/19/science-fiction-and-fantasy-book-sales-have-doubled-since-2010/?sh=4d1a707c2edf

Science fiction has exploded since the year 2000 and particularly in the last ten years. According to filmsite.org, 11 of the 20 top domestic grossing movies of the 2010s were science fiction, with a sci-fi movie being the top grossing film four out of the last five years. And in the past two decades, there have been 21 top-grossing sci-fi movies, compared with 24 from every other decade combined.
https://theaggie.org/2017/04/25/why-science-fiction-is-the-genre-of-the-21st-century/

(but I think the above includes superhero movies as SF.. which I guess they are, sort of.. plus magic and Spider Ham. )

Googling "science fiction popularity by year" or "SF popularity graph"and looking at the image tabs also found some graphs that might be meaningful

https://www.google.com/search?q=SF%20popularity%20graph&tbm=isch

[libra]

When I red this thread premises  it amused me - I thought "try the 1970's, post-Apollo slump for public opinion definitively NOT interested in space."
Big backlash back then
"Apollo's too expensive"
"Too much of a Cold War byproduct"
"Technocracy, technology and bureaucracy suck, and NASA is a glaring example of all three of them"

Late 1969 NASA had a huge "outreach" meeting to try and promote their "Mars by 1982" tentative plan. They had a lavish dinner / cocktail inside - and outside were protesters. One of them managed to haul a cardboard sign up to a window, which red exactly this (pardon the rude word)

"FUCK MARS"

----

Fast forward to the 90's when I grew up. Shuttle and Freedom / Alpha / Fred / ISS had bad press: boring. I clearly remember being rather frustrated for Gagarin's flight +40 years, in April 2001.

----

As far as 2013-2014 went, I felt like a spoiled child. Imagine: Gravity, The Martian and Interstellar hitting theaters only weeks apart. I loved all three of them. But Interstellar had an edge, and The Martian was a book before a movie - and this left Gravity as a distant third. Plus I  can't stand the carnage in that movie: Shuttle down, Hubble screwed, ISS down, Tiangong screwed, Clooney down, Soyuz screwed... it is a space nerd nightmare, although the movie is nonetheless well worth watching.

1- Interstellar (by far !)

2- The Martian (because it's fun)

3- Gravity

[tea monster]

When I red this thread premises  it amused me - I thought "try the 1970's, post-Apollo slump for public opinion definitively NOT interested in space."

I remember this quite clearly. Even by the time Apollo 13 flew, some newscasters were caught on the hop when the explosion happened as people flying to the moon was already 'old news'. People got bored very quickly. "Why are we sending people to the moon when we have so many social problems here?" was the constant refrain.

We are having some of the same reaction now after Bezos and Branson's flights with multiple memes and commenters knocking "Billionaire Space Tourists" for "wasting money" while we have so many problems on this planet. There are many answers to this, of course, but after so long, I'm getting rather snarky, and my reaction tends to be:  "Honey, you've had 50 years to make it right, how's it going for you?"

[daedalus1]

'cos Dr. Who went PC.

[su27k]

On the other hand:

Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Sales Have Doubled Since 2010
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/06/19/science-fiction-and-fantasy-book-sales-have-doubled-since-2010/?sh=4d1a707c2edf

As the article says, the growth comes from self-published ebooks, which I find are of questionable quality in most cases.

[CmdrShepN7]

And I am guilty of this too. During my college years in the 2010s all I cared about were vacations to Disney World, "Greek Life", and getting a cushy office job that would give me a nice lifestyle and German made car. I was also obsessed about so called "Healthy Organic Food".

But after checking out Apple TV during the quarantine of 2020 and the return of American human spaceflight awakened something inside of me.

I then binged watched anything astronaut or astronaut themed I could find. Movies like "First Man", "Apollo 13", "The Right Stuff", "Hidden Figures", "The Martian", "Interstellar", "Gravity", "Salyut-7". Documentaries like "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" and "IMAX Hubble". I even found an obscure anime called "Planetes".

The history of space exploration was more exciting, interesting, and inspiring than I thought.

And I ended up finding out things about the space race and space I never knew.

I didn't know how dangerous the 1960s space race was. I didn't know a Gemini mission almost exploded on the launch pad. I didn't know a thruster malfunctioned on one of Neil Armstrong's missions sending the Gemini 8 spacecraft into a spin. I didn't know the first Apollo mission was a disaster. I even didn't know there was more than one Moon landing. I didn't know nuclear rocket engines could take humans to Mars in a shorter period of time and that NASA test fired one in a Nevada desert before Nixon cancelled the Mars program.

I didn't know the space race accelerated the advancement of computer technology and inspired a generation that would end up giving us the 1990s tech boom.

I didn't knew about "Solar Storms".

I didn't know some metals were a billion times more plentiful in the asteroid belt than on Earth.

I also find myself becoming more interested in other areas of science and engineering as well. I start following astronauts and reading Ars Technica.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/as-kenyas-crops-fail-a-fight-over-gmo-rages/

Looking back I find it sad there was nothing big and inspiring to replace the Shuttle back in 2011.

I guess better late than never. We have stuff like Artemis, JWST, and SpaceX.

Still I lament about what might have been.

Imagine living a world where the American government was much more competent and cared much more about inspiring the next generation of American youth back in the 2000s and early 2010s.

It would have been a world where Starship like spacecraft were contributing to the construction of a Moon base in the early 2010s.

It seemed like much of American youth culture during the 2000s was more inspired by Hollywood style materialism and celebrities rather than dreaming of a bigger and better future. It seemed like during the 2000s math in a lot of American schools were seen as "Uncool".

It boggles my mind that American society didn't aspire to a future with better nuclear power and a better space program back in the 2000s.

Even if a person doesn't believe in "Global Warming" they should want society to happier and healthier because of the cleaner air enabled by better electric vehicles and nuclear power as well as nuclear fusion.

Wouldn't advancing further as a society be the ultimate middle finger be the ultimate middle finger to the people with middle ages beliefs who attacked us?

Also can a TV show be that powerful? I heard "Star Trek" inspired people in the 60s and 80s. I hope "For All Mankind" is doing the same thing for other people.

I am ashamed I was distracted by vapid things and that I used to want JWST to be cancelled when I first heard about it.

[Vahe231991]

And I am guilty of this too. During my college years in the 2010s all I cared about were vacations to Disney World, "Greek Life", and getting a cushy office job that would give me a nice lifestyle and German made car. I was also obsessed about so called "Healthy Organic Food".

But after checking out Apple TV during the quarantine of 2020 and the return of American human spaceflight awakened something inside of me.

I then binged watched anything astronaut or astronaut themed I could find. Movies like "First Man", "Apollo 13", "The Right Stuff", "Hidden Figures", "The Martian", "Interstellar", "Gravity", "Salyut-7". Documentaries like "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" and "IMAX Hubble". I even found an obscure anime called "Planetes".

The history of space exploration was more exciting, interesting, and inspiring than I thought.

And I ended up finding out things about the space race and space I never knew.

I didn't know how dangerous the 1960s space race was. I didn't know a Gemini mission almost exploded on the launch pad. I didn't know a thruster malfunctioned on one of Neil Armstrong's missions sending the Gemini 8 spacecraft into a spin. I didn't know the first Apollo mission was a disaster. I even didn't know there was more than one Moon landing. I didn't know nuclear rocket engines could take humans to Mars in a shorter period of time and that NASA test fired one in a Nevada desert before Nixon cancelled the Mars program.

I didn't know the space race accelerated the advancement of computer technology and inspired a generation that would end up giving us the 1990s tech boom.

I didn't knew about "Solar Storms".

I didn't know some metals were a billion times more plentiful in the asteroid belt than on Earth.

I also find myself becoming more interested in other areas of science and engineering as well. I start following astronauts and reading Ars Technica.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/as-kenyas-crops-fail-a-fight-over-gmo-rages/

Looking back I find it sad there was nothing big and inspiring to replace the Shuttle back in 2011.

I guess better late than never. We have stuff like Artemis, JWST, and SpaceX.

Still I lament about what might have been.

Imagine living a world where the American government was much more competent and cared much more about inspiring the next generation of American youth back in the 2000s and early 2010s.

It would have been a world where Starship like spacecraft were contributing to the construction of a Moon base in the early 2010s.

It seemed like much of American youth culture during the 2000s was more inspired by Hollywood style materialism and celebrities rather than dreaming of a bigger and better future. It seemed like during the 2000s math in a lot of American schools were seen as "Uncool".

It boggles my mind that American society didn't aspire to a future with better nuclear power and a better space program back in the 2000s.

Even if a person doesn't believe in "Global Warming" they should want society to happier and healthier because of the cleaner air enabled by better electric vehicles and nuclear power as well as nuclear fusion.

Wouldn't advancing further as a society be the ultimate middle finger be the ultimate middle finger to the people with middle ages beliefs who attacked us?

Also can a TV show be that powerful? I heard "Star Trek" inspired people in the 60s and 80s. I hope "For All Mankind" is doing the same thing for other people.

I am ashamed I was distracted by vapid things and that I used to want JWST to be cancelled when I first heard about it.

The design of nuclear-powered spacecraft beginning in the late 1950s was another consequence of the acquaintance with the perceived benefits of nuclear power becoming an American forte in the 1950s. Project Orion, one US proposal for a nuclear-powered spacecraft, was shelved because of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (which outlawed nuclear explosions in space) and concerns about a liftoff of a nuclear-powered rocket leaving behind a trail of radiation. As long as the American public nowadays still harbors a mistrust of nuclear power in the wake of the nuclear reactor explosions at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island, many people will find the DRACO program for a Mars-bound nuclear powered rocket hard to take seriously.

When people started watching Star Trek, most of them had no idea that according to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, when objects approach the speed of light, time slows everything down and objects get heavier and smaller. I'm not sure if the creators of Star Trek paid attention to aspects of the theory of relativity pertaining to travel at the speed of light.

I remember that the VentureStar and Orbital Space Plane Program would have been natural technological successors to the STS system, but neither reached the hardware phase, although the design philosophy of a number of concepts for the Orbital Space Plane Program has since been embraced by the Dream Chaser and X-37B. Anyway, the Dragon 2 has emerged as the premier American manned spacecraft replacing the Space Shuttle after a ten-year hiatus in US manned spaceflight after the Space Shuttle's retirement.

[MDMoery]

And I am guilty of this too. During my college years in the 2010s all I cared about were vacations to Disney World, "Greek Life", and getting a cushy office job that would give me a nice lifestyle and German made car. I was also obsessed about so called "Healthy Organic Food".

But after checking out Apple TV during the quarantine of 2020 and the return of American human spaceflight awakened something inside of me.

I then binged watched anything astronaut or astronaut themed I could find. Movies like "First Man", "Apollo 13", "The Right Stuff", "Hidden Figures", "The Martian", "Interstellar", "Gravity", "Salyut-7". Documentaries like "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" and "IMAX Hubble". I even found an obscure anime called "Planetes".

The history of space exploration was more exciting, interesting, and inspiring than I thought.

And I ended up finding out things about the space race and space I never knew.

I didn't know how dangerous the 1960s space race was. I didn't know a Gemini mission almost exploded on the launch pad. I didn't know a thruster malfunctioned on one of Neil Armstrong's missions sending the Gemini 8 spacecraft into a spin. I didn't know the first Apollo mission was a disaster. I even didn't know there was more than one Moon landing. I didn't know nuclear rocket engines could take humans to Mars in a shorter period of time and that NASA test fired one in a Nevada desert before Nixon cancelled the Mars program.

I didn't know the space race accelerated the advancement of computer technology and inspired a generation that would end up giving us the 1990s tech boom.

I didn't knew about "Solar Storms".

I didn't know some metals were a billion times more plentiful in the asteroid belt than on Earth.

I also find myself becoming more interested in other areas of science and engineering as well. I start following astronauts and reading Ars Technica.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/as-kenyas-crops-fail-a-fight-over-gmo-rages/

Looking back I find it sad there was nothing big and inspiring to replace the Shuttle back in 2011.

I guess better late than never. We have stuff like Artemis, JWST, and SpaceX.

Still I lament about what might have been.

Imagine living a world where the American government was much more competent and cared much more about inspiring the next generation of American youth back in the 2000s and early 2010s.

It would have been a world where Starship like spacecraft were contributing to the construction of a Moon base in the early 2010s.

It seemed like much of American youth culture during the 2000s was more inspired by Hollywood style materialism and celebrities rather than dreaming of a bigger and better future. It seemed like during the 2000s math in a lot of American schools were seen as "Uncool".

It boggles my mind that American society didn't aspire to a future with better nuclear power and a better space program back in the 2000s.

Even if a person doesn't believe in "Global Warming" they should want society to happier and healthier because of the cleaner air enabled by better electric vehicles and nuclear power as well as nuclear fusion.

Wouldn't advancing further as a society be the ultimate middle finger be the ultimate middle finger to the people with middle ages beliefs who attacked us?

Also can a TV show be that powerful? I heard "Star Trek" inspired people in the 60s and 80s. I hope "For All Mankind" is doing the same thing for other people.

I am ashamed I was distracted by vapid things and that I used to want JWST to be cancelled when I first heard about it.

Your story is similar to mine but shifted back about 3 decades.

I grew up in the 1970's, graduating in 1983.  I was all about comic books and Star Trek but not very much about real space.  Of course, in my middle school and early high school years we weren't launching anyone into space AT ALL while they tried to get the Space Shuttle flying. (I was disappointed by the Shuttle because in my young mind it fell far short of an Enterprise ShuttleCRAFT and still had to launch like a rocket.)

Out of high school, the first time I even knew the name "Grissom" was the science vessel in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.  Something I read made a statement about it being a very good name for a starship and finding out why they said that was the very first time I heard about Gus.  I had never been interested in the movie "Right Stuff".

By the Spring of 1986, I left Oklahoma for a semester on the Walt Disney College Program.  My first day reporting to my job was the morning of the STS-51L disaster just 30 miles east of my location.

And that is when it started for me.  The Orlando Sentinel (that I read in the Disney break room) had articles every day about the investigation.  By February, I went for my first visit to KSC.  Over several trips until I went home in May, I took the tours, and bought book after book from the gift shop.

When I got back home to Oklahoma, I kept getting more and more books about spaceflight.  I would set my VCR to record any space documentary. By 1988, I would make long distance calls to the KSC press number and listen to the Shuttle Launch Update recording (usually by George Diller) to keep track of how the preps for STS-26 were going.  (I remember watching CNN coverage of the STS-26 landing and being annoyed at Bernie Shaw asking his astronaut co-anchor Bonnie Dunbar the stupid, vapid question "How do you feel about a spaceship being called 'she'."  Just shut up and let the NASA PAO tell us what is happening, Bernie.)  I dreamed of getting a satellite dish so I could get NASA Select TV but never did.

By the early 1990's, I finally had a 286 PC and a modem and it was the age of FIDOnet.  I found a subscription BBS "NSS BBS" ran by a lady named Beverly Freed and it was filled with just tons of news.  (One I fondly remember from those days was "Jonathan's Space Report".  Every time I see Jonathan McDowell make a post here on NSF forums, I think back to those days.  He is STILL doing his thing after all these years!)

It just kept getting better and the information sources just kept improving.  FIDOnet "echos" were supplanted by Internet UseNet groups and websites on the brand new WWW.  The rise of YouTube meant I could watch a launch right from NASA without a Bernie Shaw type saying stupid stuff.

And then NSF, where you could see a post from a user like padrat, who earlier that day might have been in the LC39A Payload Change Out Room working to install a new ISS module in the payload bay of an orbiter!

[Kyra's kosmos]

I think to a NASA was somewhat a victim of its own PR. In the early days when space was new, every mission was describable by various firsts culminatating in a series of lunar landings. Space in effect sold itself aided by the science fiction of the day that was generally optimistic.

The shuttle program was sold to Congress and the public as a be all end all solution to space and problems on Earth. Pre-Challenger accident, NASA publications were still readily available showing massive solar farms that beamed power to cities on the ground via microwaves, wheeled space stations being visited by shuttles and even shuttle tourist buses. While inspiring, these in effect an unrealistic poison pill in terms of expectations.  Missions being spoke of as $25 to $45 million in 1983 were reported as costing $300 million and $700 million and vague figures involving "accrual accounting." We had the Summer of Hydrogen and a Hubble telescope that needed repair, but sure enough these problems were overcame. The science fiction of the 90s and especially of the new century brought with it increasing dystopia. Even Star Trek has taken on a somewhat dystopian edge. The final third of the life of the Shuttle was really the story of the ISS. And then as it was completed there really was nothing for a shuttle to do at that point but be a prohibitively expensive crew vehicle that brought up groceries to justify the mission. This is oversimplified, but the logistics could no longer justify its existance for another decade. Does this mean it was all a waste? No, it means it was a stage of evolution that took longer than it needed to, but it was still worth every penny.

It has now pretty clear that we can see the horizon of what conventional rockets will be able to do in terms of exploration. We will get revisit to the moon including the Lunar Gateway and a Mars Mission. Incremental improvements of a few percent here and there in terms of efficiency are not going to get us to cost effective asteroid mining, Mars colonization (if that is even practical) or to the stars. Yes, there are ideas, but no they are not really scalable. Satellites have evolved to be the size and shelf-life of a flattened toaster oven and now include the ubiquitous cubesats. They will cover many basics of low earth orbit needs. I have even mused that some of the Starlink satellites have covert piggyback SIGINT or other intelligence packages. It certainly would explain some things.

As for the next generation of space propulsion, that will really fulfill where we really want to do. Until then its best we go easy on the comic books (especially, if they involve UFO's) and anything that would have previously been printed on glossy paper. We have learned our lesson, haven't we?
 
3 Word TLDR version: Reality exceeded expectations.

[gtae07]

Hmm.

I was an 80's kid, born in 84.  Admittedly I was unusual; my dad was a pilot (Navy, then airlines) and had been fascinated by aerospace since he was a kid growing up in the 60s, so it rubbed off on me and that was definitely unusual.  Fanning the flames, so to speak, was that my grandparents moved to the space coast in 89, so I saw several shuttle launches and went to KSC on a regular basis back when it was still free.  I read a bit of relatively unknown science fiction in high school, then discovered Heinlein, Asimov, Niven, Pournelle, and others in college (which was a "where have you been all my life?" moment).  When most kids were playing Halo, I was playing with Orbiter and taking flying lessons.

But it wasn't really till I got to college that I met others near my age that had as much interest in space as I did, and even there I was unusual also having an aviation interest and being an active private pilot as well (if there was interest, it was usually one or the other).

I got the general impression that it was some combination of:
- "Why spend all that money when we need schools/hospitals/social programs?"
- "All that other stuff is just science fiction"
- "Why spend that money when all we can do right now is go to low orbit?"
- "Science fiction" as it was popular then, was Star Trek/Star Wars, more space opera than anything else.  The "classics" seemed dated in some aspects and that probably turned people off, as the genre trended more to cyberpunk, dystopian, post-human type stuff
- Computers, internet, dotcom startups, and so on with other "get rich quick on tech" became the Hot New Thing while aerospace was already being seen as the stodgy old white guys' career field, and besides the Cold War was over...

I think too many got sucked into that "end of history" mindset where all seemed upbeat and rosy and we'd all just relax into our virtual reality entertainment. 

Now admittedly I do like the slightly grittier and less rosy science fiction of late--the first season and a half or so of new Battlestar was awesome, the Expanse was very well done (even if I lost interest in the TV show for drifting too far from the books).  I think if nothing else it aids in suspension of disbelief and lines up with my curmudgeonly nature. 

[jstrotha0975]

Nobody can say the true answer because it's politically incorrect.

[DanClemmensen]

I was born in 1949. Until about 1996 I dreamed of "space and the future", reading pretty much only science fiction and making money as a systems architect and programmer. I then realized that the real future was not space, but cyberspace. Space is irrelevant to the true future, and space activity is just one (really cool) small part of human advancement. When I finally accepted that the speed of light is a fundamental limit and FTL will never be possible, I realized that any book with FTL in it is just as much fantasy as a book with unicorns or faeries. For humans, space is pretty much limited to the solar system. By the time we can go farther, we will have evolved and changed into superintelligence and humanity per se will have ceased to exist.

The highest probability is that the Singularity will occur within 20 years, before we can put a colony on Mars. Elon's entire Mars effort is a desperate attempt to build the colony first, as insurance against human extinction based on the existential threat of the Singularity.

[edzieba]

Why did American society stop dreaming of space and the future in the 2000s?

A 'begging the question' fallacy:

First, those who were 'dreaming of space' in the 2000s are those working on the current massive worldwide resurgence and proliferation of aerospace companies and efforts, and driving the greatest increase in mass-to-orbit and people-to-orbit in history.

Second, it implies 'dreaming of space' was something that occurred up until then but suddenly stopped, though without much evidence to support such an assertion. Even in the heyday of Apollo, public support for and interest in space exploration was low (Apollo 11's launch saw worldwide viewership, the launch of Apollo 13 was not deemed worth a live broadcast by even domestic US networks).

[JAFO]

Because the novelty wore off.

IMHO, Americans stopped dreaming of space in the 1970s after Apollo 11. They paid attention during Apollo 13, for the night launch of 17, and STS-1. Then they got scared after STS-51L, and since spaceflight did not suddenly produce a cure for cancer or Constellation class starships with warp drive, they moved on to other things like a bigger tv or video games or....

[Phil Stooke]

People who were interested stayed interested and still are (if they are still with us).  You are talking about the great mass of people who are interested only in the latest fun thing, celebrity gossip, shiny things to buy, ephemeral fashions etc.  They were sort of interested in Apollo 11 because it was new and all over the media.  They were never going to stay with it anyway. The real dreamers stayed dreamers and/or went on to do something in the field.  I watched Apollo 11 live on the Moon and made space my life, as did many others.

[Coastal Ron]

I think this is a silly premise for a thread, and since I was born in the 50's I have the historical perspective to know. 

First of all "American society" has never been monolithic and limited to just a few topics. The vast majority of people have their own personal lives to live, jobs to do, entertainment to enjoy, and "space" is just one of MANY topics that they are bombarded with. The vast majority of people don't "dream" of space.

Why? Because space up until now has seriously failed to live up to the hype being pushed not only by NASA, but also by the entertainment industry.

And the real applications of space, such as the International Space Station (ISS), it turns out that being safe in space makes for boring news cycles, so what is American society supposed to be excited about?

As for "the future of space", put that in the same category as "the future of work", or "the future home". So called "futurists" have been trying to imagine the future for a long time, and they rarely get it right.

So what is the "American society" not getting excited about that they should be excited about?