I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but you can't really judge the benefits of the US space program in terms of its fluffy whitewashed publicly stated obj

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but you can't really judge the benefits of the US space program in terms of its fluffy whitewashed publicly stated objectives. Arguably, it was primarily a way to garner public support for the technology and infrastructure to build up the US's ICBM force, and to beat the Soviets in having a military force in space. Remember, in the 60's people were envisioning manned space stations for the role that unmanned spy satellites later served. The Outer Space Treaty happened in 1967 and forbade the militarization of space. I don't think it's a coincidence that 1964-67 was by far the apex of NASA's budget as a percentage of GDP. It immediately started going down as it became clear that the treaty would be enacted. By the time of the last Apollo mission it was down to around 1.5%, and would drop to below 1% a few years after that. In an alternate history of those events you might have had a Soviet constellation of nuclear-armed satellites in LEO by the 80's, making a first strike a lot more appetizing.