| It seems telling that the most concrete example he gives for the value of human space flight is the usefulness of unmanned satellites. Simplistically it's true that whenever you spend money on some effort there's going to be some benefit. Paying NASA scientists to dig ditches would have some benefit in stimulating the economy, even if it doesn't offset the costs (material and opportunity). Would it be the best use of resources, however? Whenever I go down the rabbit hole of "spinoff technologies," I find a lot of it to be a gish gallop of stuff, much of which is overstated. There's a reason why you hear NASA talking up pioneering research done on Alzheimer's at the international space station, but you don't read Alzheimer's researchers talking about breakthroughs coming from the ISS. Still, there are a lot of important technology that NASA has been involved with. But when you look into most of it, the connection to human spaceflight is tangential at best, and often completely non-existent (NASA does a lot of stuff outside of human spaceflight). The kernel of the argument is accurate - scientific research can be important even if it doesn't provide immediate dividends. But too often people misuse that to argue that no amount of money is poorly spent. It's precisely because scientific research is important that we need to carefully consider the return on different projects, and make sure that the funds that are being allocated are well spent. |