I guess I am not far sightened because it gets harder and harder for me to see the benefit of the space staion. The Hubbell telescope at least furthers our knowledge of space and physics. What are we learning from the space station? The biggest benefits I see so far are to Russia who has benefited from our technology.
I am sure we have benefitted from other technologies to be used in real life but at what price? Would they have otherwise not been discovered or invented?
The ISS is the placeholder but I do agree that its usefuness beyond that is dubious.
The problem is that we never seem to recover from our backsliding. Giving it up is ground that’s hard to regain.
“Would they have otherwise not been discovered or invented?”
Sure, perhaps in some other country, but definitly not in your life time. And definitely we would not be using the internet as we are now, cell phones would look like a shoe box, computers would be sporting 128 MB of RAM on a 300 MB hard drive for backups from the tape and punch cards in a 800 sq ft room.