Sending a man to the moon was done in the context of this military industrial state's show of might and veneration of the individual. Utilitarian arguments asid

Sending a man to the moon was done in the context of this military industrial state's show of might and veneration of the individual. Utilitarian arguments aside (especially given that investments into rail very directly translate into value for the populace it serves), rail transportation infrastructure investment wouldn't have quite the impact as far as propaganda manufacturing is concerned. Or, to put it another way, why does the collective imagination seem to be more captured by Tesla (and SpaceX to a degree) than The Boring Company? In part, it's a delivery on the promise of self-driving cars we were imagined would be our eventual retrofuturist societal inheritance.