"It's impossible to say for sure but had not a lot of resources been taken from civil society for these projects, there is a chance that there'd be a demand to do it in a more effective and long-term way from the very beginning, and this is my point."

Would you say the same thing regarding the Department of Defense and the Pentagon budget? I have heard good arguments that the military industrial complex is largely a bureaucratic deadweight cost to society, with few benefits (and generates the largest loss of life through Democide: https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM ). Anyway, I think perhaps your argument fits military waste spending even more than it does with regard to the space race and NASA. Or maybe it's just a characteristic of State spending in general (like the infamous story of a $640 toilet seat https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/only-the-pentagon-... ).