Well said D. Also to consider, the employment of hundreds of thousands of Americans for all of those years in all of the related to NASA fields/areas. Incalculable to total that ‘plus’ for the USA I suppose but you get my thoughts I’m sure.
Everyone I worked with at NASA (except for the ones who worked themselves to death "doing space") fanned out to major corporations around the country.
And, let me also say, those NASA folks worked their *BUTTS* off - I can't count the endless unpaid nights I spent working on the SMS simulator to make sure we made the next liftoff schedule - all for about $16/hour (for the hours that found their way to a time card).