What NASA does, and has done since Apollo, isn't normal science and does not really fall under the category of "boondoggle".
it's special and different. NASA, and all the national peaceful space agencies, are about scientists using national pride to fund a wide range of projects, nearly none of which have direct impact on terrestrial applied science, but have captured the imagination of the public and leadership, and occasionally do provide practical terrestrial spin-offs (fewer than if we'd invested that money into terrestrial projects, but also very different from them).
look at what the dutch and later the english were doing with merchant ship technology in the 1500s-1800s. It wasn't just good business, it was propaganda to build the power of the Dutch and English states, playing critical roles in th e rapid expansion of those countries into world powers.
The US does what it does to prove that it can easily maintain space leadership (let's just pretend we didn't have to depend on Russia/Soyuz or Russian rocket tubes to put people into space). We can afford this (although, of course, people go starving).
it's special and different. NASA, and all the national peaceful space agencies, are about scientists using national pride to fund a wide range of projects, nearly none of which have direct impact on terrestrial applied science, but have captured the imagination of the public and leadership, and occasionally do provide practical terrestrial spin-offs (fewer than if we'd invested that money into terrestrial projects, but also very different from them).
look at what the dutch and later the english were doing with merchant ship technology in the 1500s-1800s. It wasn't just good business, it was propaganda to build the power of the Dutch and English states, playing critical roles in th e rapid expansion of those countries into world powers.
The US does what it does to prove that it can easily maintain space leadership (let's just pretend we didn't have to depend on Russia/Soyuz or Russian rocket tubes to put people into space). We can afford this (although, of course, people go starving).