[maverick-iceman]

> and why should everything be about quality of life? It is an important point, but not the only one.

Because quality of life gets everybody on board. This sort of expeditions are paid for with the money of people who don't agree with the spending.

These people are generally talked some sense into when they disagree with military spending, or infrastructure spending or entitlements spending. The theme is always "even if you don't benefit from it yourself, people around you do and so over time will you!"

A leftist version of trickle down, I call it trickle up or trickle laterally. I can see the point in having a discussion.

The talk doesn't even happen with space, it seems like if you are for containing space spending you hate America or something

[Dylan16807]

We have evidence of scientific and engineering advancements spreading from space programs out to the world. We also have evidence of trickle down economics not working. What more do you want?

(The biggest difference to explain that, I would say, is that a scientific/engineering advancement can deliver value magnitudes greater than development cost, but trickle down at best transfers some of the money. And that's what most of the budget is going into on a project like this, not basic equipment assembly or the proportionally tiny fuel cost.)

[maverick-iceman]

> The biggest difference to explain that, I would say, is that a scientific/engineering advancement can deliver value magnitudes greater than development cost

Nothing fungible will come out of this Jupiter mission and you know it.

If this was education budget or brain research I'd totally be onboard with it.