Of course this explanation is true. What is interesting about the article, though, is the program stopped in 1972, just at the peak of United States economic supremacy. The country went into decline thereafter:
The dead end of the US space program did not arise because of failures by the scientists and engineers who joined it out of a genuine desire to make a contribution to mankind’s emergence from a planet-bound to an interplanetary existence. NASA continues to achieve technical and scientific advances with a series of brilliant efforts to explore the solar system through robot spacecraft—in the past year alone, a flyby of Mercury, the Phoenix mission to Mars, the continued success of the two Mars rovers landed five years ago, the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, and preparations for additional missions to the outer planets.
In the final analysis, the successful exploration of space is beyond the capability of any national state, even the richest and most technologically advanced. And under today’s conditions of worldwide economic crisis, whatever remains of the gains of past decades will be quickly lost.
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