Sadly, I'm to the point that unless we call it the Kardashian Space Telescope, the draw to new generations will not be there. We're closer to Idiocracy future than Interstellar future.
I think you're overly generalizing, I don't believe today's generation is much different from previous generations when it comes to interest in STEM and the like. Sure, their attention spans are different - I mean "ours" are due to the advent of the internet etc - but I don't believe their ambitions are that much different. It's just that they want to become youtubers instead of movie stars / musicians.