What does that have to do with anything?
It's quite simple, really. If there is no financial incentive for the government to go into space, then why would it waste significant portions of its budget in pursuit of such fruitless things?
Originally the main incentive for NASA was a "space race" with the Soviets. That's the reason it was formed. NASA was not created as a genuine scientific organization, but as a competitive response to Soviet technology claims. At the time of Apollo, the Soviet Union had five times more manned hours in space than the US. They had achieved:
1. First manmade satellite in orbit (October 1957, Sputnik 1).
2. First living creature to enter orbit (November 1957, Sputnik 2).
3. First to safely return living creature from orbit, two dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats (August 1960, Sputnik 5).
4. First man in space (April 1961, Vostok 1).
5. First man to orbit the Earth (April 1961, Vostok 1).
6. First to have two spacecraft in orbit at the same time and first to conduct a space rendezvous (August 1962, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4).
7. First woman in space (June 1963, Vostok 6, as part of a second dual-spacecraft flight including Vostok 5).
8. First crew of three astronauts on board one spacecraft (October 1964, Voskhod 1).
9. First spacewalk (EVA) (March 1965, Voskhod 2).
Later on the American side of the fence, on January 27, 1967, three astronauts aboard Apollo 1 died in a fire on the launch pad during training. The fire was triggered by a spark in the oxygen-rich atmosphere used in the spacecraft test, and fueled by a significant quantity of combustible material within the spacecraft. Two years later all of the problems were declared fixed. We here at the Flat Earth Society believe that the accident led NASA to conclude that the only way to 'win' the space race was to fake space travel entirely. In any case, the first manned Apollo flight, Apollo 7, allegedly occurred in October, 1968, just 21 months after the fire.
In a mere 21 months after a catastrophic disaster, America had apparently caught up with decades of Russian research. Less than a year later, in July of 1969, America achieved the profound and spectacular technical capacity to send man to the moon. On the television screens far and wide, man was seen to have touched down on the moon.