It’s always frustrating to see folks upset that we’re spending money on space when we could be spending it at home, but if you don’t mind, here are just a few personal reasons why I think this is a false dichotomy:
1) this money is spent on Earth. We don’t ship money to Mars, we employe people like myself. Almost everyone I know who works on this is trying to better humankind. In addition to the job, folks spend so much extra time sharing our STEAM journeys publicly & in classrooms.
2) it’s inspiring. I literally work at NASA today because of Mars exploration. When Pathfinder landed in 1997, I had no clue what was possible. @NASAPersevere & others will inspire generations with the landing footage and helicopter and obvious passion of the team!
3) it literally goes into other areas. We use the compute & power platform from @MarsCuriosity on @NASAEarth missions like SMAP & NISAR. That extends to people. I’m taking my experience & applying it to NISAR, which will study our environment, to make it better & work for years.
Plenty of other folks can speak to the economic benefits and meaningfulness of asking awe inspiring questions about our existence, so I’ll add some of those here, but to emphasize, these endeavors benefit Earth without question.
Or I could let @NASAspinoff do the talking:
https://twitter.com/nasaspinoff/status/1338863426915856392
Adding this too from @mcnees
https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/624628079646871552
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