> I've always hated the argument that said "but look at how much technology has come out of the military [with all of those tens of trillions of dollars investe

> I've always hated the argument that said "but look at how much technology has come out of the military [with all of those tens of trillions of dollars invested in it over the span of a few decades]!" > Yeah, and imagine how many orders of magnitude more it would've come out if say NASA had gotten that money That exact same argument applies to giving money to NASA. Sure, it has spun off some useful technology (no, not just Tang, space pens & freeze-dried ice cream), but while we see that technology, we don't see the innovations which could have been developed with that money elsewhere. There's no reason to think that the state can pick innovative winners any better than it can pick economic winners. The reason to spend money on the military is national defense, period — not some amorphous 'oh, we'll get some cool tech out of it too!' The same applies to NASA or any other government agency.