Have you read your FIRST POST on this thread
Err, what was insulting about my first post unless you object to "flame away liberals" and that was directed to people who start with flame rather than a reasoned response.
wanna guess how effective alot of our "smart" munitions are without GPS and satellites? Or perhaps what the world would look like now if we had no spy satellites?)
I should qualify that I don't object to reasonable MILITARY R&D. This is constitutional and I have no objection to it being paid for by tax dollars. Unlike these, the manned exploration of Moon and Mars are pure frippery.
any freeper scientist that participates in these threads says almost the opposite
Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that they are right particularly about the economic side of the issue which is an area in which most of them not only don't have a clue, but have a strong personal bias toward government spending since a lot os scientists get paid at least in part from the taxpayer funded trough. Again if you've been following my ranting yu will note that I said that you never know if what you're getting for your tax dollars is worth what you pay for it because there are no economic price signals. The reason I used the Maplethorp analogy is not that Maplethorp doesn't produce art (even though I find his works repulsive) is that this is a more easily seen example of what you get for your money when the government spends it. My contention is that the same money that has been funneled through NASA over the last 15 or 20 years would probably have yielded far better results if it had been left in the private sector.
Shameful confession here. I hate stating qualifications because anyone can claim to be anything on the web and there is no proof of any of it, but I used to be in the university research business long long ago (bio/med NOT aerospace), and I saw first hand how taxpayer dollars were totally wasted. I used to wonder why the peasants didn't come with torches and pitchforks.
We've argued this before (over the last 100 years instead of the last 15-20). Modern history demonstrates the opposite. Big leaps require big dollars. Corporation simply cannot afford such expense. Will they be able to after NASA simplifies the technology? You bet.