Imagine the leaps the humanity would see if the US spent a tenth on NASA as it does on "defense" (it'd likely still outspend the next 10 countries, combined, even then on the war-dept.).
Used to do radio astronomy before switching to software, and we would joke that you could fund all of US science grants for a decade by driving to the local airforce base and stealing couple of jets and their loadouts. It wasn't that far off from accurate, sadly.