Your point isn't completely invalid, but it's a circular argument. Whatever the external force was, the system had the ability to complete the objective.

One could actually argue that sending a person to the moon didn't directly achieve anything for the people, so that wouldn't necessarily have been a goal by itself anyway and was a waste of resources.

What’s the point? If there was no space race the USSR would likely just invest even harder on cybernetics and information technology, as they were also pioneers in these areas, for example.