In the American astronomy community, there is a process every 10 years to determine what should be prioritized over the next decade. It's called the Decadal Sur

In the American astronomy community, there is a process every 10 years to determine what should be prioritized over the next decade. It's called the Decadal Survey.[0] The Decadal Survey does not determine the overall level of funding for astronomy. It just says, "If you gave us X amount of money, here's how we would divide it up, based on what we think are the most important questions in our field." There's a competitive process within the community to propose projects and argue for different scientific research areas, which eventually gets distilled down into a set of funding recommendations. The Decadal Survey is really just a recommendation to the funding agencies, which can ignore it if they wish. However, since it does represent the consensus of American astronomers, it's taken very seriously. As for the overall level of astronomy funding, astronomers have very little control over that. That's decided at a political level, by Congress, and I doubt there's any rigorous cost-benefit analysis to society going on there. 0. https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/decadal-survey-on-astronomy-and-astrophysics-2020-astro2020 https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/decadal-survey-on...