Billionaires have polarized space exploration

> Instead of a moon base or an expanding space station, it was a time of expensive, unreplicable, and zany over-designed unmanned missions, like bouncing robots in big balloons down to the martian surface, as if NASA was the Wile E. Coyote backed by a couple billion in government funding. Even now, people are hyped over NASA’s drone helicopter on Mars that flies for only 90 seconds at a time, a thing that is, let’s be honest, basically just a publicity stunt.

Complaint that space exploration isn't fast enough and doesn't look cool enough. That's original.

I'm certainly willing to criticize NASA for many things, but bouncing landers and figuring out how to fly in a different atmosphere sound pretty appropriate to me.

I suspect the author would find reason for dismay even if the space race was being led by pitiful refugees in ramshackle backyard rockets; "those people don't properly represent us." Perhaps I'm not catching the argument properly... No, I know i'm not. "It needs to be done, but not like that"?