Clark Lindsey has some thoughts:

NASA lost public support after Apollo 11 for many reasons but cost was the primary factor. It didn’t help that no one could see themselves ever traveling on such a stupendously expensive throwaway system like Apollo. Today NASA managers should not be surprised that few people, especially young people, are excited about seeing NASA build yet another totally impractical and stupendously expensive machine to carry another small elite group of astronauts to the Moon by some arbitrary date.

[Update in the evening of the thirteenth]

Dan Schrimpsher, who is “just an engineer,” has some further thoughts.