ever heard of the concept of a public good- something that people can not effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others (ie light houses, environment...)- basic science research tends to fall here. Then again, maybe you want to government to profit from that advances it sponsors- an internet use fee maybe?
Exactly. Some things are without economic value. That's obviously a difficult concept for some to understand, and the reason we are a greedy, selfish, lazy culture on the decline. First the Hubble has no economic value, then when shown technological advancements came from it, we just "gave them away". Some things are without value to begin with, they are priceless. The knowledge and stunning pictures we got back from Hubble fall under that category. They are for the good of humanity. Money is a human construct, a way of buying and selling our time basically.
Private industry is all well and good, and maybe more commonly used advancements come from privatization of space. But private industry will not send probes to understand the universe or discover other life, sentient or not. The advancements that come from this, intentional or accidental, are often exponentially more advanced than private industry space tech because what they discover is unknown and unexpected. Private industry won't search for the unknown or unexpected, because there's no obvious money to be made.
If money is the bottom line over science and understanding the universe, we are a sad species indeed, and it's a happy coincidence that insane advances in technology and this quality of life often result from this purely scientific research. But some things, like, oh, I don't know, knowledge and understanding the universe are priceless and for the benefit of us as a species and life form. Reducing it purely to dollars is both sad and a step back for us as a culture and a world, and the reason the US is on the decline. Now that that is all that matters, we are on the decline. Coincidence? I don't believe it is.
