> For context, the JWST cost us about as much as Americans spend on one Halloween. That's a cute argument, but flawed. For any project, scientific or not, you

> For context, the JWST cost us about as much as Americans spend on one Halloween. That's a cute argument, but flawed. For any project, scientific or not, you need to estimate the return on investment and to survey the alternatives. With your argument it appears you can skip these things. If a project costs less than how much Americans spend on Halloween, then we just do it? By the way, for a lot of people Halloween is quite important. It must be, since they are willing to part with their money. But that's a choice each of them is free to make. Spending $10 billion on a science project that discovers some distant galaxies is a choice made by other people on their behalf. And when this happens it is the duty of those people to ask and answer some questions. Using your argument, it follows that the people who make that choice do not actually need to ask and answer the pertinent questions. Because, you know, science is always worth it. > They'd correctly point out spending the money inventing the technology is precisely how it gets that cheap 30 years later. They would certainly point that out, but incorrectly. In the case of JWST, none of the money spent on it resulted in technologies used by SpaceX to build the Starship.