Thats really tough for me.... there are some games I have played HUNDREDS of Times.

The ones I have played the most of (more times I can count) would be easiest:

RPGs: Tunnels & Trolls, AD&D 1st Ed, Champions 2nd Ed, Champions 3rd Ed, Hero 5th Ed, AD&D 2md Ed, Psi-World, GURPS 3rd Ed, GURPS 4th Ed., Runquest (Avalon Hill Ed.), Call of Cthulhu (Various editions), Marvel Super Heroes, Timemaster, a whole bunch of unpublished Homebrews, Cosmic Synchronicity, World of T'Phon, IronClaw/Jadeclaw.

Board/Card Games: Fluxx, Chrononauts, Settlers Of Catan, Dominion, On The Edge, Cosmic Encounters, Highlander The Card Game, Wizards (Avalon Hill Game), Munchkin, Guillotine, Illuminati, Lost Worlds, Star Fleet Battles.

I have a lot of others I've played, mostly 20 or less times on each, and an even greater number I own and have never played.

Once upon a time, in a previous life, I managed and was house GM for a game store (back in the 80s) and later had friends in a similar position, so I played a lot of games... did a lot of game design experiments and playtested a LOT of stuff. 40+ years of gaming it gets easy to have things accumulate. Back in my store days I was working 6 days a week and either demoing, running or sitting in on games every day. It becomes a blur over the years... but with 24 hours spent gaming on the average week it gets easy to not remember every mechanic or setting I used to deal with back then.

@Kazimierz Kurz The main reason, I'd say, is that there was unfortunate political in-fighting that prevented us from developing alternatives to the Space Shuttle. In fact, we do have other launchers - most prominent are the Atlas V and Delta IV.

It would have been prudent to allow development of manned capsules launched from Atlas V and/or Delta IV. Both are roughly in the same class as Falcon 9. If either had been done, then there wouldn't have been a need to open things up to Falcon 9.

Additionally, Ares/Constellation was just a really bad idea. I really don't know what was up with that. The Ares I "stick" was a radically different new launch vehicle with no margin. Unlike all other manned launch vehicles, it used a solid rocket booster. A solid rocket booster can't just be lengthened a bit if you need extra capacity.

Surprise surprise, when the Ares I was getting too heavy (no margin), they had to expand it from the current 4 segment tooling to new 5 segment tooling. But this completely obliterated the cost savings and development risk mitigation arguments.

Since we no longer had 4 segment tooling, Ares V had to be redesigned also. Everything had to be 5 segment. We're talking massive budget overruns and multi-year delays on top of delays.

The infuriatingly sad thing is that NASA engineers had already - without prior permission - put together a proposal called DIRECT for a more robust Space Shuttle System replacement. It looks a lot like Ares V or SLS, but shorter. It was just the original Space Shuttle System with the plain old pair of 4 segment solid rocket boosters, with a capsule on the tip of the central tank rather than the Space Shuttle orbiter, and Space Shuttle engines at the bottom.

This "Jupiter" launch system would not be as cheap as (the unworkable 4 segment) Ares I or have the payload of Ares V. But it would have been much easier and quicker to get flying, and with a lot less technology risk. And plenty of margin for the capsule going over weight.

Anyway, that ship sailed away when they retooled from 4 segment to 5 segment. Now we've got the superficially similar SLS, but with 5 segment boosters that have never flown.

It means they got lucky. A whole lot of things went downhill in Russia, naturally, including much of their space program. But Soyuz seemed to be doing okay, and that's lucky and fortunate.

However, even Soyuz's luck may have run out, because it has also been having problems.

As for whatever happened to the USA ... I think focus has dramatically shifted. During WWII, the USA focused on building lots and lots of tanks and fighters and ships and stuff, and just kept on doing it until the Cold War ended. So, we had lots of leading edge jets and such simply because we spent so much on it.

When the Cold War ended, we tried to scale back and spend "smarter, not harder". But the result was that we ended up with much fewer programs employing much fewer people and sending an unmistakable message to the next generation that they'd better try to prepare themselves for completely different career paths.

So, we end up with all our eggs in a few baskets. If F-35 has problems, we're still stuck with it because there is no Plan B.

And we end up with fewer people for Boeing and such to draw upon, and you end up with more problems with Boeing jets.

There has been a lot of focus here in the USA in trying to boost "STEM" education to keep us competitive, but the problem is that our capitalist system will force young people to pursue what can earn them a living, not what will make the USA "competitive". Ever since the Republicans cut taxes on the wealthy 4 decades ago, that has meant going into the financial industry pushing other people's money around, rather than doing something that actually produces useful things. Or it means trying to become the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerburg rather than making something that can actually help people.

Getting back on topic ... Elon Musk. Yeah, he's a bastard, but he does earnestly believe that battery electric cars will help the environment and help society. But he wouldn't have had the money to try and get into the battery/car business if he hadn't first made money on an IT tech get-rich-quick scheme (PayPal).

That's the problem. Our system means that you can get-rich-quick with a way to just move some money around, but things that actually produce things? Good luck with that!

NASA couldn't chose to continue funding shuttle until the replacement came online, if Congress wouldn't provide adequate funding to do that.

Congress did the same thing decades ago, when they refused to continue funding for Saturn V while developing the Space Shuttle System. The result was an embarrassing gap in manned launch capability, during which time our Skylab space station literally fell out of the sky.

At that time, the pressure was seriously on NASA to deliver more for less funding, because there were a lot of folks in Congress looking for any excuse to cut NASA entirely.

This time around, it was more or less inconceivable to cancel NASA entirely, but they still had to try to sell some sort of big bold vision to President Bush and to Congress. So was there really a choice? They could say, in the early 2000s, "Okay, we can continue funding Space Shuttle and use what's left over to develop a new interplanetary mission system that'll first fly in 2024." How would that have gone over? Like a lead balloon. Alternatively, they could go all in on a new system, diverting money and manpower from STS to the new Ares system.

And it probably would have worked if it weren't for The Stick (Ares I).

You don't understand what I have said.
The reasons may be different: political, financial, technological, demographic etc But comparing with USA it's hard to say in advance what reasons really are.
The simplest explanation is that all of your space program ( I mean man flights) was just propaganda against Russia which had it earlier. After Russia collapse USA no longer need such thing ( while Russia needs it even more with the same motivation)

Another possibility is that you just moved money to war& conquer business, starting all of this pathetic proxy wars, and just moved on. Clearly making a lot of profits from this ( for military sector of course). Your wars seems mostly support private business.

Another is that all of USA political and social circumstances where so complicated you cannot fund man space programs because of some internal circumstances ( for example social problems with people insurance or influence of oligarchy which focus on bailouts rather than science). This is area I have no knowledge, but according to the state of your country during covid19 pandemy it looks not so improbable. It is not true your state now is just single Trump responsibility effect. If you have enough resource and properly organized political processes, even with Trump you can go much better. It is a sign of failing country government, and the question is: how long ago it begun. Maybe Obama don't said in public everything about USA, which seems obvious.
Etc. Etc.
It is not so common for advanced technology country to forget such big achievement. Specially a country with such aspirations and self-esteem.
So still I am not understanding circumstances why this has happened.
And Russia is only for comparison, that it can be made, even during systemic failure. Just only this.