Alan Anderson wrote:

As it happens, this is one of those "not in full agreement" bits. I
think flights of United States astronauts made plenty of sense in the
context of the Space Race, which itself was reasonable in the larger
context of the Cold War.

I think it's illuminating to ask 'how would the Cold War have gone
differently if the space race hadn't happened'? I doubt much would
have changed. It eventually became clear to all that communism was
seriously flawed, so it wasn't necessary to demonstrate first
world superiority by means of large government programs.

Paul