"John Keeney"
I'm afraid that until manned space flight is as accessible as
manned flight, most of the world will not consider it as important.

You make a good point. Unless there is a very big break through in
booster technology getting the cost per pound of payload down to an
acceptable level this is not going to happen. You will not see 747 type
space flight for a long time to come. Sputnik did however turn the military
world up side down with the beginnings of the space race etc. For the
general public I guess the biggest impact was in communications technology.