&gt; The opportunity cost of the Apollo missions were enormous, even if there were positive outcomes that spun out of it.<p>True, but if you&#x27;re talking opportunity costs then I see Apollo, and the space race in general, as a great success story. They took the polotical atmosphere of nationalism, paranoia, one-upmanship, costly signalling, etc. and funnelled some of it into exploration, science and engineering at otherwise unthinkable levels.<p>It it weren&#x27;t for the space race, it&#x27;s likely the majority of those resources would be poured into armaments, military-industrial churn, espionage, corruption&#x2F;lobbying, (proxy) wars, etc.