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Originally Posted by tw
And so we blame the Shuttle and ISS to further victimize science - doing more 'glory for no purpose' manned spaceflights to the moon.
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You seem to refuse to accept the point that both I and Bruce have tried to put forward - that there is an emotional aspect to space exploration. At the risk of being flamed by you, yet again, I agree with much of what you say. There *is* a huge wastage of money being spent on projects that return a questionable level of benefits, and more deserving projects are canned because politicians want to gain points for supporting the "glory" missions.
As Bruce has pointed out, the public will choose a widescreen plasma TV, over a new space probe, every time. You can't fight human nature. Yes, you can try educating them, but experience shows me that the public wants to hear about the sparkle and flashy coloured lights, and are less interested in the science. The politicians know this, and use it against us. Welcome to my world.
I don't know how we can convince the public that scientific research is worth the money. They think it is great that a sports star gets paid millions of dollars a year, yet they are reluctant to spend more money on scientific research (I realise I am talking about different pools of money, but it is the public's opinion that I am targeting).
Nothing will change until the public realises that a good scientific research project is worth more to their lives, than a sports star's multi-million dollar salary. It is the same issue that you are raising about NASA.