Personally I think it is questionable if the US Government would have put a dollar into space or semiconductors had there been no Soviet Union. The Soviets wer

Personally I think it is questionable if the US Government would have put a dollar into space or semiconductors had there been no Soviet Union. The Soviets were willing to put large amounts of effort towards scientific advancements and exploration with little obvious profit motive on the other side, and it spooked the US into funding fantastic levels of basic scientific research. It's interesting to see the percent of federal spending on basic research has fallen off a cliff since 1989: https://www.gspublishing.com/content/research/en/reports/2020/04/29/67c9cada-68a2-48af-b25c-0f5416c0c0c8/jcr:content/report/chapter_2/exhibitGroup_2/exhibit_2.img.png https://www.gspublishing.com/content/research/en/reports/202... The lion's share is by business now, which is more likely to invest in things that have more obvious immediate profit avenues.