One has to look out for engineers - they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb. We are leaders of the world of the space program. Space is the next frontier to be explored. And we're going to explore. Japan, detection of potential ballistic missile attacks.
Ballistic missiles are still here.
Other nations do have ballistic missiles. We use space a lot today. Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all of the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.