[ztjio]

I love science. I fully support the desire to answer big hard questions that may be answered with this tool. I absolutely am 100% behind spending this money on this telescope.

I, however, do not believe it will ever provide any kind of substantial return beyond possibly helping to answer some esoteric questions about the universe that nobody alive today or in 10000 years will benefit from.

Life isn't an investment, or it's a really terrible one, as the final return is oblivion no matter what. Making all decisions on the basis of "investment" is stupid. Why? We all will eventually die, the planet incinerated, all of this is pointless. Even if the JWST helped lead to interplanetary travel that only changes the timeframe, the heat death of the universe being inevitable. If your only basis for doing something now is some material return in the future then you've totally lost the plot.

So yeah. I think it's a bad investment and I'm glad we spent the money on it.

[hypertele-Xii]

The heat death of the universe is a theory that has never been observed. Theories like it depend entirely on our understanding on "esoteric" aspects of reality, which contrary to your belief have brought fantastic benefits to nearly everyone alive today, including you and I, right now sharing our thoughts through magical telepathy, the result of some new instrument finding some new "esoteric" phenomenon like radio waves some time ago.

[marnett]

Thanks for the reality check. It is so easy to take the product of our science for granted.