[ramblenode]

The British won out over the Spanish because they realized they didn't need enormous warships to win naval battles. The Spanish weren't ignoring the need for a navy--they miscalculated and misallocated resources.

The irony is that the commenters saying we must go back to the moon are more like the Spanish: sticking to a sentimental 1960s vision of human-based space exploration despite evidence clearly favoring robotics and remote control.