Beyond the Moon
Of course, we have not retreated from space. During those forty years we’ve explored most of the solar system, using technology as far advanced over the Saturn V as the Saturn V was over the Wright brothers’ plane. Advanced enough, in fact, to abandon the expensive, dangerous, and pointless practice of sending humans along physically.
We will never forget the drama of that day in 1969 and the courage it took to step out into an utterly lifeless, waterless, airless desert a quarter million miles from home. But today, sending humans to the Moon or the other planets would merely be a stunt. Anything that humans could do there can now be done at least as well by machines for a tiny fraction of the cost. So far from abandoning space exploration over the last few decades, we've figured out the right way to do it.