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I asked my daughter - she said nobody can see any stars due to light pollution. This was also my first thought.
I was born the year sputnik launched and so grew up feeling the link between space travel and astronomy. This link died for most people at the end of Apollo. Modern space travel is too expensive for private flights and stuck doing the same old stuff with NASA. This may change in about a decade.
I used to sail and needed to know celestial navigation. Now there is GPS. Even professional ships masters don't need to study celestial navigation.
I think the public likes the pretty pictures the observatories now publish, but most are not interested in understanding the research. Expensive pictures don't help pay the mortgage.
Astronomy education was never good. Now legal liability limits any observing.
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