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The race to the Moon has always stuck for space travel?

Yesterday started the space shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-129 . Seeing it go up in the sky of Florida I could not help thinking that, among only five missions this will be no more ... After nearly thirty years of loyal service the space shuttle, the first spacecraft, ends up in the attic and NASA will replace it with (perhaps) an Apollo-style capsule ... 's Orion .
read the excellent book by Stefano Cavina " Cosmonauts " I could not fail to notice that in the late 50's the U.S. began to arrive in space (over 100 km) with the X-15 aerospace plane but then it all came suddenly removed from Sputnik, Gagarin by and the start of the race to the moon. The U.S. could not lose supremacy against the Soviet Union and that is that President Kennedy (who cared very little space if it had not served his propaganda purposes) shows the Moon as a target by 60 years. At that point, all efforts are concentrated in the only quick way to achieve the target the missile. All research and achievements gained from the X-15 go into oblivion (just to be retrieved by an individual, Burt Rutan, who in 2004 will be able to make the first private suborbital flight with his Space Ship One). Here I am, then the question of the title ... and if the race to the Moon (fantastic goal and the limit of capacity at the time) was the "Boulder" that has blocked the emergence of the "real" space travel so far and for many years to come? Sure, it can seem like a provocation, but think about it, if there had been no race to the Moon, perhaps NASA would continue the development of aerospace plane always most performing up to reach Earth orbit ... could cost as a launch from an aircraft in flight compared to the complication of a launch of a rocket from a launch pad vertical ... also for the shuttle (which is not a real rocket ship, but something in between) it takes about 4 months of preparation for a flight. With a system of space plane air-drops (and maybe later they would also have to take off on their own) was the conquest of space, si, più lenta, ma avrebbe poggiato su solide basi che avrebbero impedito di essere, di continuo, messa in discussione per gli altissimi costi. Forse oggi avremmo davvero avuto tutto quello immaginato dallo scrittore Arthur C. Clarke nel suo romanzo 2001...