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Admit it, you would all love to be on the Moon with Jet packs. Heinlein being an avid Anti-communist perhaps did more to set back the future of the USA. For him there was no equal share of the Space Empire for the Workers who were expected to build it and be pushed aside when they couldn't. It was all about the flag and the 'inheritors of power' who would 'take over' when it was built. That's not a future - that's a terrorist at the back of a cave ordering New York Pizza and expecting delivery in thirty minutes or else.
The Russian and Chinese Experience with Communism - it may have been tyrannical and ruthless with human rights but their economies are now in a position where while they will be racing each other to Mars and Beyond, the USA will be a Ship sinking while the Workers riot for a one-share of their labors and Drown forgotten as resources are poured into making things well for the few who govern the many.
If you think that isn't true pop down to 'Katrinaville' and do a head count to see if the million Displaced Americans have homes and jobs again (not that that problem didn't have a solution- the USA could have picked up all the insurance payout and given every family a shipping container house to live in that would have been better that the cardboard they have somehow been expected to live in for centuries). Katrina wasn't just about doing well by its citizens - the reward for failure was loss of Face.
All the USA has to do is make all its citizens equal shareholders in Profits and invest in all the things that will make it grow (like Energy Production) and that will lift all its citizens upward out of the abyss they are rapidly being used to fill so the people throwing them in there can cross safely.
Faith in a system that doesn't betray and abandon them - but rewards them with an equal share that cant be taken away because those who decide they can govern others - believe that less is more is better than the horror offered by Religious Zealotry, Corporate Slavery, or plain old Despotism.
So why shouldn't you be rewarded with a home for life for building that city on the Moon? Why shouldn't you as its builder - rather than the Henry Ford Dreamers - be entitled to a place on the Starships that are sent to colonize other worlds?
You should read "The High Road", by Ben Bova. It is non-fiction and extremely relevant to your post.
double post - can someone kill this one?