You solve the problems you have at home before you start making yourself concerned with what your neighbor is doing at theirs.

Space exploration, as it was sold to the general public, was an arms race. The public demonstration of which nation could build faster the engine and carcass capable of delivering a nuclear payload on the other. The money spent on that would have been better spent towards achieving true and long lasting civilizational goal, like disease and poverty erradication, environmental preservation, clean energy and so forth.

It's the broken window falacy.