People predicted that we'd have moon colonies by now and even be mostly on the way to making Mars ones. Instead, we basically gave up and now pay billionaires to go to space while making fun of and snubbing our favorite icons like William Shatner.

The idea that we even want to go to space is dead, at least in political terms. Irl, we get to be slaves until the earth ends within our lifetimes, making us dream of like socialism or at least less cost gouging in our near future. No wonder we turn to fantasy settings like LOTR and Harry Potter rather than sci-fi - the former is fun but the latter becomes increasingly depressing when you try to mesh futuristic technology with what we know of human morality today.

Tbf, the dream is not dead, it's just... postponed for awhile while we sort things out on earth.