PROBLEM 1: Basic science is hard to budget for. We're a good ten years behind the 8-ball on global warming because all the NASA projects to study the atmosphere got cancelled by the Bush II administration. Counterpoint? We're a good 20 years behind the 8-ball on elementary physics because the Democrats cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider to punish Tom DeLay (and to pay for the space station) BUT

PROBLEM 2: Proxy warfare is cheaper than actual warfare. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade" wasn't "science" it was great power competition. It still is - the problem being that nobody has wanted to fight us since Neill Armstrong. Except now China does. And India does. If you think there's no blowback to an Indian moon lander, a Chinese space shuttle and an American Starliner you aren't paying attention.

PROBLEM 3: There's a lot of shit hidden in that budget. The Space Shuttle was as big as it was because NASA told the NRO (which was classified at the time) that they would get a shuttle big enough to loft their biggest satellite, the NRO told NASA they didn't want to rely on the Space Shuttle, NASA told the NRO "we want one big enough to loft a school bus, we double-dog-dare you" thinking maybe that would excuse them but it didn't so they had to build a spy satellite the size of a school bus. In the end? 10 out of 135 shuttle missions were entirely classified, more than a handful more were partially classified. The shuttles were originally intended to fly more than 50% classified payloads. That's why they built SLC-6 at Vandenberg.

PROBLEM 4: Private advancement requires public advancement. SpaceX exists because Musk went to Roscosmos for his planned Mars missions and they gave him the fuck-you price; Musk then spent himself past bankruptcy emulating the Korolev Design Bureau (before conning investors to save his ass for the fourth or fifth time). Roscosmos, for its part, exists because of the space race. The Russians are still flying the R-7, which put Sputnik in orbit.

PROBLEM 5: Grok doesn't know any of this. "ZOMFG NASA is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO wasteful" has been the college catchphrase since the Mercury 7 but without NASA there's no

Because of 1, 2, 3 and 4. You can't "cancel" NASA because there's a whole bunch of gremlins under her petticoats, and you can't really audit NASA because you don't want anyone to see them.

An anecdote: My great uncle was instrumental in developing LORAN, the radio technology that used to keep American civil and military aviation on track. It was all civil aviation had until Flight 007 got plugged over Korea by a skittish Sukhoi. On the one hand, it was sure behaving like a spy mission and the USSR had made its feelings clear about this shit. On the other hand, 269 people died because the plane was off course.

We had GPS by then, of course. Reagan released it to civil aviation and now your phone knows where you are to within 100 feet or so. The Soviets, who did not have GPS, continued to fuck up. The general Soviet lack of having-a-clue led to some high comedy.

Now - can you tie all that directly to NASA funding? No. Can you tie it all indirectly to NASA funding? hell yes. Starlink is just Iridium with VC funding and Iridium ties directly back to SCORE.

Is NASA perfect? No. Is the world a very different place without it? Evidence suggests so, yes.