system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why did people quickly lose interest in space travel after the first Apollo 11 moon flight? Few TV networks broadcasted Apollo 12 to 17

The later Apollo missions were more interesting, had clearer video quality and did more exploring, such as on the lunar rover. Data shows that viewership dropped significantly for the following moon missions and networks also lost interest in broadcasting the live transmissions. Was it because the general public was actually bored or were TV stations losing money?

 This makes me feel that interest might fall just as quickly in the future Mars One mission if that ever happens.
gpt
Because space travel is not inherently engaging for the vast majority of people. In order to be interested, there must be something novel or dramatic to keep people engaged. Hardly anybody saw the Apollo 13 launch, but as soon as lives were on the line it became an internationally captivating story.

It's similar in many other areas such as public safety. A man shoots up a school with 20 children dead and we have congressional inquiries and wall-to-wall media coverage, and people calling for armed guards in every school, but every year thousands of children are killed in the USA from automobile crashes and hardly anybody bats an eye.

> Was it because the general public was actually bored or were TV stations losing money?

TV stations certainly missed opportunities for paid programming, but would have likely continued if there was public interest if only to maintain good-will among their viewers.