I’m all in favor of a sensible space program and realize that numerous technological developments have come out of it over the years but this “moon crash” business at $79 mil during a miserable recession is one of the most unpalatable things that NASA has done, IMHO.
If NASA is spending money, you realize, don’t you, that it’s going into the salaries of local people? Those local people—some scientists, some technicians, some support staff, some building maintenance people, some folks who fix the cars in the motor pool, some admins—use it to make their house payments and buy groceries and clothes for their kids. Even when the money goes to federal contractors, they too are using it to pay salaries. If it’s used to buy actual hardware, that money too ends up in someone’s pocket and gets recirculated back into the economy. In other words, it’s not as though NASA made a big pile of money and set fire to it.
Or would you rather that we close the whole shop down and put even more tens of thousands of people out of work? That would be helpful along about now.