I present to you, the common citizen. In fact, with our sad excuse for an education system, I'm somewhat surprised that most people manage as well as they do. Our schools do an woefully inadequate job of teaching science and history to our young, so it's not hard to understand why most people seem to have difficulty really understanding the benefits that space research brings to us. O h, they love their satellite television, but they don't see what that has to do with going to the moon. NASA can spend money on new space programs or it can spend money promoting the benefits it has brought about through those space programs.
Advertising is expensive.
An extensive PR campaign could easily cost as much as any single space program. If it starts down that road, it wouldn't be hard to sink most of the budget into simply trying to justify it's existence. Don't let the neo-luddites get you down. T he future is still out there and we'll get there one day. Until we do, all we can do is try to keep that dream alive.