No, it takes a certain personality to want great engineering accomplishments to be routine. Because if they're not, we'll probably be trapped on this rock for several more centuries.
[UPDATE to answer without burning karma]
Someone says "We live in some exciting times." and I try to explain how exciting it could be.
Unless we actually have the "glass is only half full" discussion there's little chance of improving the situation. We have this political correctness problem where you need to always be positive.
I find it neither unhelpful nor unpleasant. It could certainly be happening faster if we could persuade politicians to expend more money on space engineering or facilitate the raising of private capital. I find your argument strangely teleological.
No, they do not. Otherwise we'd have three dozen New Horizons-class spacecraft flying throughout the solar system and Kuiper Belt by now.
Right now, there's a sizable contingent of people who are looking at the Pluto imagery and muttering to themselves, "So what? How does this affect the Kardashians?" Some of those people -- not all of them, but enough of them -- vote. All of this self-congratulatory stroking on our part just empowers them.
Absolutely true. When a co-worker saw the picture I posted on hipchat of Charon, he said "so what, looks just like our moon."
Thankfully he was chewed out by another science fan in the channel, but a sad number of people care less about this achievement than about the latest sports team win.
I should have said "(nearly) everyone reading on Hacker News wants..."
He's complaining to the choir (of sorts) while disparaging the very real progress we are making because it isn't as good as it could have possibly been if reality were different.
[UPDATE to answer without burning karma]
Someone says "We live in some exciting times." and I try to explain how exciting it could be.
Unless we actually have the "glass is only half full" discussion there's little chance of improving the situation. We have this political correctness problem where you need to always be positive.