A society can do multiple things at a time, and it's a more efficient use of resources to do so. Progress made in an activity versus resources put into it is ge

A society can do multiple things at a time, and it's a more efficient use of resources to do so. Progress made in an activity versus resources put into it is generally logarithmic or even asymptotic when investing extreme amounts of resources, so if you have a huge amount of resources to spend (like a country does), you can get more done in total if you spread them out a bit instead of focusing on one thing at a time. Sticking another billion dollars into fixing housing would have a negligible difference. Finding solutions to something like that requires experimentation, data gathering, and deliberation, which all take time. Putting people on the moon will not affect the passage of time for those of us on Earth. (And it hardly affects the passage of time for anyone on a rocket, as well.)