One thing to keep in mind as well are the peripheral benefits of NASA
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Posted by fanofnothing on 2012-02-27 09:53:15
In Reply to: Any thoughts on funding for NASA, physics related to space travel, and Hubble type projects? posted by shikantaza on 2012-02-27 09:36:37
People always bring up technological innovations that benefit other fields, which is true enough, but not in my mind enough to justify the money. Surely if you needed memory foam matresses and tang, starting separate programs to invent them would have been cheaper.
But, on top of that, there are lots of other benefits which are harder to quantify. You have scientists and engineers who work on NASA projects as students, developing skills that are applied to other fields. You also have kids whose imaginations are stoked by the program, and while they may not go on to work directly for NASA at any time in their career, had their path in life directly changed by the influence it had on them. I know multiple people for whom this is true, and science in general has benefited from this.
In a pure dollars per science returned, I sometimes lean against things like manned space travel, but there are lots of factors on the other side of the coin that are harder to weigh.----------
"Who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."
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