People forget that NASA's portion of the federal budget during Apollo was more than an order of magnitude higher than today.
NASA does the most ambitious thing it can get funding from Congress for.
NASA does the most ambitious thing it can get funding from Congress for.
Nasa: No that's too costly.
Congress: lol ok we'll slash funding + you legally can't refuse.
If this sort of continued honesty-free space program is what Congress + NASA are going to give us, we'd be better off without a manned space program.
Old NASA could do 5-10x as much, with the same amount of inflation-adjusted money and people. The motivation was to fail+learn and achieve a shared goal. SpaceX is the closest analog today, with a long term mission and the drive to make it happen.