I have a love/hate relationship with NASA.  You first have to remember that their efforts are usually well-intentioned, but they are not 100% benevolent.  This is a government agency that needs government dollars like they all do, but it also wants all the dollars it can get, whether needed or not.  The 2017 budget was 18.4 BILLION with a “B”.

Many of the people who work there do so because they like doing what they do & they get paid very well to do it, so it’s not like their making sacrifices — only the astronauts are doing that, not to mention risking their lives, but they’re also doing it for the same reasons as the rest of the NASA employees are — they like it & get paid well to do it.  The difference is that the astronaut’s efforts are usually necessary, whereas a lot of NASA’s efforts in themselves aren’t.  Don’t even get me started on the NASA contractors & the billions they make that are mostly wasted or well-overpaid.

For one, the moon race was the biggest waste of money there ever was.  We’ve had no need to be there now nor probably ever, and if we do, the money we’ve spent to get there won’t matter as we’ll still have to spend money to get there again if and when it becomes necessary.  We could have probably sent a drone up there to take pics & samples for way less.

So what if the Russians or Chinese had put people there — it will never be colonized now or later, so it means nothing other than misplaced pride & dollars.  The money spent to colonize Mars or even send satellites to there or any other planet is a total waste of money.  They serve no purpose other than to satisfy our curiosity & knowledge about them, which doesn’t change anything here or there, and keeps NASA & its contractors & its employees flowing in gov’t money.

The Space Station was another gargantuan waste of money.  Many more billions of dollars wasted for nothing but curiosity & keeping NASA employees checks & contractors’ checks rolling in.

But here’s the good parts, and see how they screw up those as well . . .

The space shuttle was a good thing and it should be resurrected.  Not only are we able to fix satellites & space telescopes with it, like Hubble, which should repaired & maintained for as long as possible regardless of the Webb telescope — even NASA says Webb is not a replacement for Hubble.

Speaking of Hubble, that was the best expense we could have ever made.  However, they have said they won’t continue to put money into repairing it & that’s a bad idea even with the Webb telescope coming, and even the Webb telescope wasn’t built to be serviced, another bad idea, as Hubble required servicing numerous times.

Another far more important thing we need to do is put more money & effort into finding all the potential Near Earth Objects out there & also work on a deflection solution to keep them from harming or destroying Earth.  This is our #1 space problem & they aren’t doing enough.

NASA research & technology (mainly via its contractors) has brought us many wonderful inventions/innovations, such as memory foam, smoke detectors, carotid artery scanners, long-distance satellite phone calls, TV broadcasts “live via satellite”, Cable & Satellite TV itself, GPS, this list goes on & on.  But we overpaid for this and continue to do so.

Don’t mention the “faked” moon landing.  We went to the moon alright — we just shouldn’t have gone.