They don't care because it's been a while since NASA has really done anything interesting.
But that's a completely subjective point of view! I, for one, look forward to when NASA publishes new Hubble Telescope images. To me, that is interesting.
...The parent post was right, its youth and short-sightedness and it will change in time.
I'm 23, and fixing Hubble is interesting to me. However, I don't blame youth, I don't blame short-sightedness, I blame the program for not taking any risks in the last 30 years (other than negligent ones). I understand that what (most of) our Shuttle missions do in orbit is very important and has advanced our understanding about the atmosphere, weather, old people in space, and so forth. However, the reason it was so easy to get involved in in the 60's is the fact that it was
A) a race
B) to the moon/unknown
Of course every mission can't be firing people off to Mars/Moon and the like, but we really haven't made any effort to get there since the Apollo program (or several dead programs of the past 30 years)... And if it's going to be a "chicken or the egg" thing where interest will have to go back up before Congress gives the funding to actually do anything interesting (to the majority of non-space-geeks), then I'm afraid we'll never go anywhere.
Not to derail too much, but I really think that the money required to get us reasonably along on a track to send people to Mars (or at least have an ISS that does something other than be a roomier MIR [refueling etc]) is a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend in Iraq. The whole X-33 project cost ~1 Bil, a number that feels incredibly small compared to what we spend in Iraq every week.
