I actually wrote a piece of storyline a few months back about how americans end up losing their Mars colony because the majority stops believing in space travel (it's existence) and opt to believe that it's some elaborate hoax to suck up tax payer money. As a result the colony is cut off from supplies and space travel (by US) is banned as a 'scam'. The colony then proceeds by declaring independency, which is ignored by media. Later the martians start colonizing more worlds and secretly trading with some Earth companies - which is illegal because officially space travel doesn't exist, but the law is broken due to the lucrative mineral trade the martians can provide from the Asteroid Belt and Earth's orbit.
http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html Jack Churchill quote: "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"
Nah, his complete and total awesomeness is showing. Personally, I'd rather the extended set up time for the reduced maintenance time.