Space Programme: Overrated or Best thing since sliced bread?

[HoreTore]

The benefits have yet to show but in the meantime it keeps really smart people busy. I am way too dumb for it but science should always reach out imho. Moon-landing was a revelation of what is possible in the future so it was not useless at all.

Some people seem to think that innovation and scientific progress is something that happens in garages or in laboratories, with the aim of inventing something new.

That's not how it happens.

What drives scientific progress are huge projects into new territory. The moon landing, the space shuttle, the LHC and major wars are such projects. They are what forces progress to happen. Thus, the real aim of such a project is never its stated aim. The main benefit and aim of the moon landing wasn't to put people on the moon, it was the zillion inventions and discoveries that happened because of it.

So, to label such projects as failures because they failed to achieve its stated aim is an attitude that will bring our technological progress to a halt, and if that attitude had dominated through history, we'd all be stuck in the stone age.