> "This [X] we're standing on right now helped protect us from nuclear war," Owen says.

Um no. It just helped the US know where shit is. They didn't keep us safe. Mutually assured destruction did. That's why every war since then has been a proxy war.

If anything, programs like this poured massive amounts of money into expanding out out of control military and probably caused the expansion of wars into areas, leading to the deaths of countless civilians in the former USSR nations.