Comment by esrauch

Do you think that had this not launched that it would have been spent on something else that would have "saved humanity" better?

US spends 4x as much on just nuclear bombs as the NASA budget for some perspective. Nuclear bombs are only 10% of the military budget, and as big as the military spending is, all of that is still only 15% of the federal budget.

It seems a bit ridiculous to be thinking NASA spending is in any way meaningfully holding us back from whatever "save humanity" spending we could be doing.