Put together a real push for Mars and get people excited about science and technology again.
I hate to break this to you, but people like us are the only ones who were ever interested in science and technology. Most people couldn't care less, even when they were racing to the moon. The race itself excited people, but the science and engineering behind it didn't.
Also, manned missions to Mars are not "cost effective" but you can't beat the sizzle effect that you get from the "boots on the ground" of a live mission.
Read Moon Lost or see Appollo 13 (taken from the book). EVERYBODY watched Armstrong and Aldrin land on the moon, but two missions later and it was "meh" ...at least until the spacecraft blew up and almost stranded the crew in space.
Sad to say, NASA, for the most part has become another government bureaucracy.
It was always a government bureaucracy. It's just that during the space race it was a far better funded government bureaucracy.
From 1963 to 1970 was a great time to be a kid watching all this stuff happen.
Yes, it was. I was 18 in 1970.
Too bad there were a lot of other ugly things going on at the time, (Vietnam, Watergate, etc.)
On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latch on locks on several doors in the complex (leaving the doors unlocked). He took the tape off, and thought nothing of it. An hour later, he discovered that someone had retaped the locks. He called the police and five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) office.
Nixon resigned in August 1974; I was in the USAF and the headline on the newspaper in Alaska as I came home read in giant bold capitals "NIXON RESIGNS!"
Watergate was a little past 1970, but there were the assassinations, Cuban Missle Crisis, Johnson, Nixon, the Kent State massacres, the 1968 Democratic convention, and a host of other bad stuff, though. But the economy was in good shape.
How about a space elevator project? Arthur C Clarke said we would build one roughly 50 years after we stopped laughing at teh concept. Well, the laughing seems to have died down.
Well, we have 50 years to go. I'll be dead by then.