The government canceling manned space flight equipment may have been the best thing for us. NASA has shown they are incapable of building practical manned vehicles. I was stunned when they could not build an orbital vehicle. We can't rebuild Apollo but pay to ride on Soyuz. North American, Grumman, and a lot of other companies went to the moon. It is past time for those who can't to get out of the way of those who will. Go Space X!
Um, I agree with the "Spirit" of your post, but NASA really did not make anything. All the worked was farmed out to private companies.
ALso, NASA, which has now, did build a sub orbital vehicle, and there is a whole fleet of them. The XB-37 can stay in orbit for over two years doing God knows what. A "New" Saturn V engine has been made, it was made with probably the world's most fantastic 3d printer. This engine is throttle-able and has already been test fired. A throttle-able rocket engine is a designers dream. It can be scaled up or down, changing the whole nature of space travel.
The political forces which made NASA keep making Space shuttles, when they wanted to stop at three, steered NASA and it was 0ur Government which steered NASA, of course. My personal opinion of course!
This video explains it better than I can or ever will be able too, many many parts of this were made using state of the art 3D printers.