“The best description for this: If you took ten of the best scientist and engineers of our times today, and locked them into a vault with no access to computers, and gave them a simple detailed requirement to develop or design something like this out of thin air......it might take forty years and you can’t even be sure of the success of the end-result.”
LOL, just look at how long it is taking to reinvent Apollo technology.
If not for the space-program, we may still be trying to figure out how to build a memory chip.
The space program bought the early 'very expensive' chips that kept the effort alive and spawned the chip-making industry we know today.
It would have eventually come...just later.
(BTW, I was already making chips when Intel started-up in 1968)