My dissertation centers on the rise and fall of the American space program, asking why NASA blamed the collapse of space on a disintegrating American future. I reconstruct how the agency first envisioned a long-term future of interplanetary conquest in space and industrial revolution on Earth and then, as criticism mounted in the late-60s, scrambled to reorient around a future of short-term economic gain. I trace this shift from prophecy to profits in space and on the ground, revealing how the rise and fall of the Space Age reshaped the American social, economic, technological, and political landscape. Intertwining the historiographies of neoliberalism, Cold War science and technology, and the future, I argue that NASA’s fate is indicative of a shift in the way the American state attempts to bring about a future of social progress through technological development, industrial planning, and social engineering.