What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS) produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly wants them to produce jobs not anything else.
Have you noticed that most critics aren't complaining about all of NASA, but mainly about SLS/Orion?
On reddit, what usually happens is that SLS defenders try to misrepresent attacks on SLS as an attack on all of NASA, parenthood, and apple pie. And so the world turns.
... it's pretty clear that the person who said that is unaware of the full scope of NASA's programs. But that's not the person you replied to. You replied to someone specifically criticizing SLS.
There's a logical train here, that I think you're attempting to work around.
1. Nasa is a jobs program
2. A jobs program that produces good tech?
3. Yeah, but what did SLS produce?
4. You know that SLS is not NASA (is what I should have said). But I actually said was close enough.
3 makes zero sense unless the poster believes NASA ~= SLS.
I find it fun that we're saying the same thing (NASA != SLS), yet here we are arguing.
Given that this was all different people, I'm not sure why you chose to interpret #3 as not knowing that NASA != SLS. As I said, critics focus on SLS. I could easily have made statement 3, and I work at an org with plenty of NASA funding for non-jobs-program projects.
And if I were to go out on a limb, I suspect if you asked person 1 what they were mad about, it's probably the human spaceflight program, not science.
Excuse me, I am quite aware of the scope of NASA's programs. Perhaps you are unaware of the politicking that's surrounded the space program since its inception and the longstanding history of NASA as a pork funnel.
None of that is a disparagement of the scientific research NASA does. But for congress, the value is a way to send money home.