Someone asks if NASA is worth funding:
A recent report from the U.S. National Research Council found that the public does not consider investing money in the space program a priority. This poses a problem for NASA, which, with its current level of funding, will never be able to undertake a massive endeavor like a manned mission to Mars.
Public apathy toward NASA, a lack of understanding of the benefits of a space program, and more pressing matters all lead people to
ask: is NASA worth funding at all? Couldn’t that money be better spent working on the economy, homelessness, or the housing market?
Actually, standards of living were lower when NASA was big. But people who cared about humans walking on the moon were not especially interested in glitz toys instead.
He concludes,
So why should we fund the space program? Ultimately, it all boils down to one reason.
For Science.
Completely oblivious to the fact that that is exactly the problem.
If the multiverse rules, why bother with science anyway? Cosmology can be just whatever someone dreams up, like the storytellers of old. Sure to be true somewhere, somehow.
But why pay a huge amount for it?
For a brief look at the trajectory of why we don’t go to the moon any more but profs explain what we should do if space aliens arrive on the doorstep, see, The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).