Well, you're not wrong, but there's two sides to the coin. NASA naturally tends towards bureaucracy, which is by its nature inefficient. James Webb, Hubble, almost every project ends up costing several times what the initial proposal outlines. It's an entire culture of low-balling, the space industry... just like most industries heavily reliant on government contracts (highway construction, education, the military, etc.). Do I personally think it's worth it, despite the elephants in the room? Sure, and so does the average citizen. Space is exciting! But consider this; We have put so much red tape in place that from a taxpayer's perspective, it doesn't make sense anymore. Incredibly stratified layers of Quality Assurance, expense tracking, systems of labor documentation, configuration control, the list goes on forever. What these systems do is push mission success from somewhere around 80% (now I'm low-balling, it would likely be a slightly higher success rate*) to >99%. That sounds great, except the end cost is ~50* times as much to guarantee that last 19.9%. Probability of success vs. costing reveals that from a taxpayer's perspective, NASA is wasting money. I had the above conversation with a grad student whose alma mater was once vested in Cluster, which didn't exactly pan out. He mentioned the faculty's overwhelming feelings of loss and sorrow upon the incineration of several years of dedicated toiling. These sentiments, when combined with the obvious pressure to upkeep organizational reputation, both for NASA and its contractors, are two rarely mentioned factors that have contributed to the current state of things. The most cited factor is the relative lack of competition in comparison to a commercial market. And yep, I'm all for privatization of some elements of the space industry. The only issue is that a commercial entity has no incentive to fund science for the sake of science. When there's no reason (no conceivable product or service that will result from the science) private enterprise should shell out the big $'s (like deciphering magnetic reconnection, discovering extra-terrestrial life, etc.), then that's where the space industry's privatization falls flat on its face. And that's why we should always be willing to set aside government funding for space science. Can I get AdMan707 in here to comment on future interplay of privately and publicly funded space operations, as per the discussion he initiated concerning asteroid mining for metals? *This number is my best guess derived from my experience of working on several instrument prototypes and a sounding rocket mission vs. working on a major orbital mission (Magnetospheric Multiscale). I've tried to take into account all of an orbital mission's extended operating costs (btw CASSINI is still doin' it up!... albeit with some additional funding), attempted to scale for complexity, and then rounded down by a factor of two. Disclaimer: I've spent the last few months cleaning up paperwork for instruments that myself and everyone else knows beyond a shadow of a doubt are working 100% properly, just because it's standard operating procedure. Little bitta angst at work here. I'm also considering doing a #tripreport for the photos I took up at GSFC, I'm just not sure if it will land me in jail or not.