> what do we have to show for it?

For starters, you are on HN amusing yourself in your free time.

A huge variety of tools and technology that billions of people use daily.

What did we ultimately have to show for the money poured into Apollo? I'm a big fan of space exploration but putting twelve people up there for a few days at a time is pretty small potatoes compared to, say, the creation of smart phones or vast improvements in solar power and batteries or a thousand other things that have been done since 1972. I can push a (virtual) button on a rectangle I carry in my pocket and be instantly on a video call with my mother who lives a thousand miles away. And I don't even have to pay by the minute. That's positively magical, and in terms of actual real-world impact on average people it's far more significant than moon landings.

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