https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-... i

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-... in general, there's a lot of items on the urgent list, there's so much money to go around and you don't want to invest everything in endeavour X only for Y to be worse and catch you by surprise. so you allocate some budget to secondary research as well. NASA doesn't even burn that much in the grand scheme of things.