It's crazy how many resources are available a "stones throw" away, relatively speaking, and yet functionally inaccessible. I wonder whether, post Apollo, if space exploration had kept apace instead of diverting all that money to, well, wars, where we might be technologically on that front.
well the problem is with capitalism
we needed to put "all" our resources to "defeating" our enemies in the space race, and we even lost that. Afterwards with no enemies the profit motive kicked in.
It's hard to deny the galvinizing force of ideological hatred.