I managed to be "sick" enough to stay home for every Mercury and Gemini launch, and most of the Apollo launches. Huntsville, home of Redstone Arsenal and Werner von Braun, was an hour up US72, and parents of my friends commuted there and built rockets. Huntsville went from 22000 to 150000 in about 3 years, and real estate developers made fortunes.

I recommend to you the book "The Right Stuff" for an accurate portrayal of the sentiment of the day.

A sane space program would have developed from the X-15 program, but all was subordinated to Apollo. After Apollo, NASA tried to burn the blueprints for the SaturnV to avoid having a competitor for the Space Shuttle, and was only stopped by a lawsuit by the L5 society. So we got stuck with a space truck of dubious design, unmanned probes, and no way to get to space today except by hitching a ride. Bureaucrats run the space program, which equates to covering their butts and doing nothing productive.

Ponder this. He who controls space rules the earth. Fighting him will be like being at the bottom of a well, armed with rocks. You can't reach him, and he can bury you with little effort.