Musk is another history-ignorant victim to “recency bias.”
The USSR scrapped its own moon shot program in 1974 (still not having built a booster capable of the mission) because there was no longer any point in spending that much money and expending that many science-years in the process. America already had stolen its thunder because the whole thing was basically a political “dog-and-pony” show.
It was never about advancing science, it was next to entirely about who’s (national) penis was larger.
Also, until it had been proved that we could get there, no one gave much thought to what uses it might be put to once you’d got there. Before Apollo, the general consensus was that the moon was uninteresting dead rock. It was only after Apollo that serious men put serious thought to what it could be used for, and began creating the technologies that would be needed to exploit it.
Your narrative is seriously flawed.
The best book on the issues you discussed:
https://www.amazon.com/One-Small-Step-Great-Dominate-ebook/dp/B07NB2QL13