"No one" threw some 85 million dollar after them, just so the game gets made in the first place. Someone seems to care rather much I'd say.
As for awareness and enthusiasm in the "general public"... Let's be realistic. What was shown of the most beautiful space combat sim ever made, was a janky tech demo with beautiful assets but very little finished game to hold those together. Beautiful assets are being made by other studios in the industry as well and the promise of some mythic ultra game one or two years down the line will hardly cause riots when there's hardly more than decidedly wip demos to show now. PC exclusive and targeted at absolute high end machines on top of that, which severly limits the target audience.
ATM we probably can't expect to average Joe-wants-to-kill-two-hours-every-other-evening gamer to wet their pants because of Star Citizen, when there are perfectly good other games to play in the meantime. The hardcore online gamers, who'll probably be the target audience for SC's PU, won't get much out of Star Citizen now either, because to keep them occupied, it needs a released game. Between CS:GO, Eve, LoL, WoT, WoW and all the others, they'll probably find their fix elsewhere.
The game will have its time to shine when it's in a releasable state. In the meanwhile though, I don't think there's any reason for jealousy for the attention other games may be getting. Especially, as it remains to be seen whether space combat sims can even have the mass appeal that todays shooter's enjoy.
