I think that NASA's budget, unlike many other federal agencies, is actually highly beneficial to US Taxpayers due to the large amount of IP/new inventions gener

I think that NASA's budget, unlike many other federal agencies, is actually highly beneficial to US Taxpayers due to the large amount of IP/new inventions generated. Similar to DARPA, there are huge ROI factors that come in from an organization that researches, conducts science and engineering efforts on a massive scale, resulting in technologies that consumers can use economically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies NASA's budget is one of the smallest slices of the federal budget, and for that amount we receive a great deal back in benefits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA Due to the huge amount of technologies generated, and refined from these large prestige missions, I do not consider them to be a waste of funding. One great example are the weather satellites generated by the NASA/NOAA partnership, such as GOES-R, and JPSS, and their predecessor missions in GOES & POES, to name a few. While they are very expensive they equip meteorologists with the rich data needed to make accurate observations. These observations directly impact human life, both by guiding evacuation decisions, knowing tornado tracks, and also, farming decisions. This same data is used for supply chain management, and there are a number of other uses for it. Although many commercial media sources will be happy to provide you a weather feed, they often do not tell you that they have a backend connection to NASA, NESDIS and NWS, in order to provide their own weather data, or data from a research satellite. Or they'll provide you a customized photo which is actually a tailored version of imagery from GOES-*. Because of the incalculable costs of an earth impacting asteroid, or a Carrington-dwarfing electromagnetic storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event , outward looking to see more of the cosmos is one of the best things we can do to ensure our survival as a species. The more we look out, the more we are able to prepare for such an event.