I’ve not seen a posting in this thread by anyone who is against expanding into space, or reforming flagrantly wasteful programs like the Social Security Dept., the Dept. of Education or Health & Human Services. But this doesn’t change the fact that NASA gets $16 billion of our tax dollars each year with which to play. It puts well under 1/2 of 1% of that into its prizes program, which increasingly appear to be designed so that the prizes can’t be won (thereby perpetuating our dependence upon the NASA bureaucrats). Do you favor that?
Your attacking a tiny percentage of how NASA spends it’s money, challenging people with difficult tasks is NOT wasteful if in the end it produces new better ways to accomplish a task. Even if they do not meet the final goal, they still will push themselves and come up with new solutions that would not have existed before otherwise.
Risk, challenge, attempting difficult tasks.
Have you ever failed?
Did you learn from it?
Do better next time?
Falling on your ass persuing tough goals is often more valuable in the long run then attempting easy things without fail.
NASA is in that game, remember?