I wasn't addressing the question of quantity of funding, but rather the efficiency of the funding. Is the research valuable, or is it just pretend-value from spending intended as pork? A lot of government funded research is of that kind. More generally: the market has a way of evaluating research value (did it lead to profit) while the government's actions have no reality check. They depend on the wisdom of officials who inevitably have conflicts of interest.

> A lot of government funded research is of that kind.

A lot of everything is of that kind. Larry's folly is of that kind. Most defense spending is of that kind. Most startups are of that kind.

BTW, my brother was one of those officials, judging grants at the NSF in DC. But that was only after a career in physics at Sandia.

Simply determining the value of something is difficult. This is a big part of why communism didn't work -- it's impossible for central planners, however wise, to figure out. The communists piggybacked on price signals from other countries but that's not a great substitute for ones own market generating the price signals.

Absent price signals, determinations of value inevitably get corrupted by other interests. Look at the long, sorry history of NASA's manned space program. Value there has become "does this deliver $$$ to my district".

My dad worked on Mercury and Apollo. The first put men in space and the second put men on the moon. There was a shit ton of spin offs from this. We got a step up on GPS because some grad students were saying what if after recording Sputnik ephemerides.

Research doesn't work by central planning. Grants to researchers is competitive. There's corruption not because of the scientific method but rather because of the human condition.

Your view of this is very politicized. I'm done here.

The manned space program was entirely political, so complaining about politicization is hilarious.

Apollo was a national potlatch. It was "look how rich and successful capitalism is; we can put 4% of the federal budget into a pile and set it on fire, we're so good." Spinoffs are an unjustifiable myth. To the extent we can know, they'd have occurred anyway (ICs, for example). The most important thing to remember about Apollo is we didn't go back, which is clear evidence it wasn't needed. But to a true space fan, like a true communist, space programs can never fail, they can only be failed.