[MAGZine]

There's not a lot of practical benefit to looking at the stars beyond trying to understand the universe we live in.

However, many _many_ technologies have come out of the space race and other space related endeavors--you might be surprised.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

And these are just concrete technologies. A lot of research done to reach the endpoint was, of course, used in many other areas of research. Even just manufacturing breakthroughs--taking something possible "in theory," and actually producing an instrument to do the thing involves a lot of research that bears fruit for basically anyone paying attention.

[outworlder]

> There's not a lot of practical benefit to looking at the stars beyond trying to understand the universe we live in.

Of course there is! We are not just looking at pretty pictures. We are also refining our understanding of physics.

Dark matter alone is a glaring indicator that we don't understand what's going on nearly as much as we should. Without any telescopes we wouldn't even know that our theories had a problem.

Improved physics understanding has always led to technological leaps. Be it electromagnetism, photonics, or even just relativistic effects. And now, quantum computers.