It would be interesting to imagine what might have been. What if the Soviets had not launched Sputnik and pushed us into a space race? We might have gradually moved from the X-15 to X-20 and had a reusable manned spacecraft sometime in the 60s or 70s. Maybe we would have developed a small military space station in the 80s. Being military it would have been done with a lot of secrecy, with no launches on live TV. No Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, no Moon landing, etc. I think it was Gene Kranz who said it was like someone had grabbed a decade that shouldn’t have happened till the next century and put in the 20th century. It’s like we took a giant leap forward, and then stepped back. We may have to wait till later in this century to have a real manned space program. Oh I hope not. I won’t be around that long.