If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances. They are a by-product of doing something hard. But if you choose the actual task t

If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances. They are a by-product of doing something hard. But if you choose the actual task to be one that is useful, you also get the results of the task. So yes, throwing money at space exploration will get you some advances as by-products. But so would throwing money at, say, fusion research, or extremely high speed ground transport, or nanotech, or, heck, I dunno, synthetic (biological) life... and you'd have the chance of getting something useful as a direct product. I worked in astronomy, which is also pretty pointless from a practical point of view (and also has close links with space research). A lot of effort is put into making things look pretty and exciting exactly because people believing - for no sound logical reason - that it's a wonderful thing is what keeps the money rolling in.