agreed. America's attitude towards china has been absurd. instead of seeing it as an opportunity for us to step up, we deflect responsibility as if america was forced to offshore its manufacturing and venerate idiots over scientists.

Agreed. The US has squandered so much money over the decades that they're now over $300k/taxpayer in debt, with interest to that that being the fourth largest cost, and two of the top three being insufficiently funded programs that simply steal from the grandchildren.

It would be even more embarrassing if we didn't cut back on non-essential spending.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time https://share.google/adgsGnl43Yk8S0zDq

Can we see expenditures, big equipment contributions, Nobel prizes, etc. on a graph?

Because let's be real here all the patriotism is just a facade the rich want to keep the money for themselves. Singing the national anthem on the fourth of July is cheap.

However, I feel that what is argued about, by all sides, misses the point.

The US spends 2X what China does on civilian space programs, and 4X what Europe spends. We spend 2X as much on health care, 1.5X as much on education, and 2X as much on science research.

Our systems are inefficient and corrupt, and that is what needs to be addressed.

Arguing for or against how much money we need to spend or to cut is just the modern day circus that distracts everyone from the real problems and provides everyone on both sides with feel good excuses.

And their cuts are trying to avoid that, although they have thrown out many babies with the bath water. It's hard to blame them for trying to avoid default, which would be far worse than anything.

The program apparently cost $900 million which is not a trivial cost.

In my lifetime I never got the impression that any area was particularly the scientific leader.

Just to be clear about the new budget law. It does not attempt to reduce the deficit or debt at all. It sidesteps existing law to increase the deficit beyond what is actually allowed.

The rate of increase of the debt increased last Friday, even as we are told we can't afford things we could afford 10 years ago.

Put simply, we were doing a better job of managing our debts until last Friday when we decided that the national debt doesn't matter.

There is no evidence of this need and every single cut feels like it hurts the citizens more and more.

What needs to be done is an increase on taxes on the wealthiest corporations and people instead of cutting science funding, food benefits, and kicking people off their health insurance.

The recent legislative changes exploded the deficit. They didn’t reduce it.

Any concern by Conservatives about debt is fraudulent given their actual behaviour.

Whitey still on the moon

Having said that I think that there are some practical benefits coming from this research that aren't commonly discussed. For example: adaptive optics - which is heavily used in astronomy - is also used in medical imaging and national defense. Astronomers also drive a lot of detector development. Previously this was the CCD, now things are moving into new, exotic devices like MKIDs. Maybe one of these new detectors will end up in a mobile phone camera in the future, and you'll be able to take excellent photos in low-light levels. There are many more examples I'm sure, but this is just what I have off the top of my head..

The final practical AND philosophical application I can think of, is that we are about 10-20 years away from putting direct constraints on life in the universe. A big proportion of astronomers are currently working on this. I think an answer to this question will dramatically change how society views itself.

The cosmic microwave background is not even something imaginary far away in time or space. It is radiation that surrounds us in the present. It is passing by the earth constantly, all the time. There's some research trying to use it for space navigation, but no one knew you could do that when they pointed antennas randomly in the sky. The amount of cross over some research has to a lot of other research and eventually to practical applications cannot be easily comprehended. Science builds upon science in very complex and convoluted ways with each step being that people simply tried to find more about something around them that they did not know. If you knew how to find it, then there's nothing to research in the first place, is there?

There must be so much information in cosmic microwave radiation about things we may not even know. Who knows if it could lead to uncovering information about dark matter or dark energy and who knows where that information would take human civilization. At this time, research simply indicates that you find out as much about it as you can, because it is there!

The funny thing is: this science with few direct application to human affairs is one of the oldest sciences. Those few applications, as a standard of time and use in navigation, have had a far greater impact upon the establishment of human civilization than any other scientific discover.

It would be easy to argue that those are things of the distant past and that other branches of science have a more direct impact today. That's true. Yet it is also true that our curiosity of the heavens has been a constant. While our early notions were pure nonsense, they shaped society. While our initial discoveries of its true nature had little immediate impact upon everyday life, it formed the basis of future scientific development. For example: the Copernican model of the solar system was more true to the actual form of the solar system, but it was less accurate than the more refined Ptolemaic model. Kepler figured out the ellipses bit, through the extensive observations of Tycho Brahe. Observations of planetary motion provided evidence for Newton's theory of gravitation. Ironically, observations of planetary motion also lead to the refinement of the classical model by Einstein. The understanding of gravity has been fundamental to engineering. While it is plausible that much of that would have been discovered without astronomy, the development of special and general relativity depended upon astronomy. One of the most important applications of that is GPS.

Now it would be easy to argue almost all of these discoveries have their basis in the study of the solar system, but that's not really the point. In the times of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, the utility of studying the motions of the planets would appear to have about as much relevance as the study of the CMB does today. They certainly would not have been able to predict what we have discovered due to the foundations they laid. The same can be said of modern astrophysics. We can claim that it may help us detect and understand the nature of gravitation waves. We can claim that it is a handy tool since "the universe" is better at building particle accelerators than we are. Yet even if we made astounding discoveries along those line, people would still ask: what use is it? We can't really provide an honest answer for that since we have yet to travel that path through time (i.e. we don't know what the future holds).

If you ever have a chance, I suggest reading a book on the history of astronomy. You will find many names that you will probably know from other branches of science, and learn of the many discoveries that have been made or facilitated through astronomical research. (That's particularly true of physics and mathematics.)

Lowering inflation by cutting social services is like trying to free up disk space by deleting `/usr`. It will be devastating.

Meanwhile the wealthy have sequestered so much wealth for themselves that it makes any talk of "reducing inflation" by taking it out on the general population as the anti-democratic sham it is. Our government is purportedly Of the people, For the people, and By the people. For this to happen the government must function as an agent for the people, not just for the tiny minority of them who own the wealth.

Unless you're saying we should take extra-legal means to usurp the government. Then we'd be no better then the January 6 Capitol rioters.

As long as the American electorate is largely uneducated or mis-eeucated about politics, and continues to gullibly believe the words of wannabe dictators, we'll continue to slide into fascism.

Is this "a trillion dollars" in the room with us? The budget of the canceled project is not even 1B. You're off by not one order of magnitude, but by three.