[eru]

Whatever you can imagine they could spend the money on, including leaving it with the tax payer or taking on less debt.

(And, if you don't like the monetary framing: just look at the real resources spend instead.)

However I'm not nearly as harsh on unmanned space exploration.

[fastball]

That's not how resources work. Resources that are used for space exploration aren't magically available for anything else when you don't do space exploration. The economy is not a zero sum game and human capital is not fungible.

A rocket scientist/engineer/technician/etc at NASA is not going to work on the thing we "should" spend money on instead if tomorrow you shut down NASA's manned spaceflight programs. They'll probably go work on ads at Meta instead.

[eru]

Who said anything about adjustments being instant?

> They'll probably go work on ads at Meta instead.

And provide value there, yes! That's how the economy works.

> That's not how resources work. Resources that are used for space exploration aren't magically available for anything else when you don't do space exploration. The economy is not a zero sum game and human capital is not fungible.

Your 'Meta' example was about fungible human capital, wasn't it? In any case, human capital is fairly fungible in the long run: people won't train on the skills necessary to hurl primates into space, if they know that there's no manned space programme in the first place.

And to make my position sharper:

NASA and the world would be better off shutting down their manned space programme tomorrow. A lot of the skills and human capital (but not all!) involved there can be funged into unmanned space exploration.