Reality is that we don’t know how much of a trope this statement is.

I think we would get all this technology without going to the moon or Space Shuttle program. GPS, for example, was developed for military applications initially.

I don’t mean to invalidate your point (about genuine value arising from innovations originating from the Apollo program), but GPS and comms satellites (and heck, the Internet) are all products of nuclear weapons programs rather than civilian space exploration programs (ditto the Space Shuttle, and I could go on…).

Yes, and no. The people working on GPS paid very close attention to the papers from JPL researchers describing their timing and ranging techniques for both Apollo and deep-space probes. There was more cross-pollination than meets the eye.

It's not that going to the Moon was pointless, but stopping after we'd done little more than planted a flag was. Werner von Braun was the head architect of the Apollo Program and the Moon was intended as little more than a stepping stone towards setting up a permanent colony on Mars. Incidentally this is also the technical and ideological foundation of what would become the Space Shuttle and ISS, which were both also supposed to be little more than small scale tools on this mission, as opposed to ends in and of themselves.

Imagine if Columbus verified that the New World existed, planted a flag, came back - and then everything was cancelled. Or similarly for literally any colonization effort ever. That was the one downside of the space race - what we did was completely nonsensical, and made sense only because of the context of it being a 'race' and politicians having no greater vision than beyond the tip of their nose.

I’ve been enjoying that Apple TV show with alternative history as if we’d kept going. It’s kinda dumb in parts but still fun to imagine!

For All Mankind. I tried getting into that, but the identity politics stuff (at least in first season) was way too intense for me. I'm not averse to it at all in practice (Deep Space Nine is one of my favorite series of all time) but, for me, it went way beyond the line from advocacy to preachiness.