NASA is planning to send astronauts on moon's orbit in late 2020s...

[tater]

People need to stop comparing anything to Apollo, for one. Apollo was continuously funded partially because of Johnson pushing it (he was genuinely interested in it), and partially because JFK was dead in a way that made this a legacy thing.

During Apollo, a majority of Americans polled never said that the government should fund trips to the Moon. It maxed out in the middle of 1961, at a little over 40%. People thought Apollo was worth the cost at almost 55%---right after the Apollo 11 landing. It then dropped back down to the ~40% where it lived for most of the program.

http://www.academia.edu/179045/_Public_Opinion_Polls_and_Perceptions_of_US_Human_Spaceflight_

I generally think that the public conflates human spaceflight with NASA, forgetting almost entirely about space probes---the most successful aspect of spaceflight, by far. That's the real reason human flight matters, people seem to be interested in it in a way that they are not regarding probes. I'm very interested in probes, but as I admitted above, I cannot help but be drawn in by the sheer adventure of human spaceflight. The public that funds things tends to agree, and like it or not, they never found the Station interesting.