The Space Race Was A Waste of Money

This week is the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Everybody is treating it some big accomplishment but if you stop and look at it the whole thing was a waste of money and time. The cost of the Apollo program from 1961-73 was $25,400,000,000 which in today's money is about $153 billion. At about the same time the Vietnam War cost the US $161 billion which in today's money is about $969 billion. With the money that was squandered on the space race and the Vietnam War we could have instead provided everybody with free healthcare, free college, and maybe even free housing.

The space race was actually a horse race between the US and the USSR. When the Cold War ended the space race became pointless. Also the costs no longer seemed worthwhile which is why interest in space exploration died. George W. Bush talked about going back to the moon and more recently Trump has also talked about it. But the costs/benefits ratio no longer seem compelling to a debt ridden America. The only ones who benefitted from the space race were a few white guys.