The US had already transitioned to solid rocket ICBMs with the Minuteman and Polaris programs before the Apollo program even started. The military certainly ben

The US had already transitioned to solid rocket ICBMs with the Minuteman and Polaris programs before the Apollo program even started. The military certainly benefited from advances and electronics from the program, but that R&D was a tiny fraction of the expenditures. No need to spend 4% of the National budget to justify that. And there was no shot of getting to Mars in the 60s. The massive expenditure that Apollo required barely got us to the moon by the end of 1969.