Totally agree with Bill Anders.
Plus, humanity gets hugely better value for money out of basic science research, where the main game is particle physics. That’s where taxpayers’ money gets massive value over time. All of our major technological advances have come from pure science research.
The space projects of NASA are not science programs. They are merely technology applications whose main purpose is about getting votes for Congressmen in the many states where NASA has facilities. The politicians then fund NASA in return.
NASA space projects do stuff-all in terms of furthering our knowledge of how the universe works. They are show pony technology projects, with or without sending people into space. Astronauts to Mars is mainly a potentially extremely wasteful publicity device and job creation/maintainence project for public servants.
