Indeed, we won't know what advances defense spending will yields 50 to 100 years down the road. However, it is also true that we don't know what basic science research will yield 50 years to 100 years down the road, and I rather human spend money on space exploration rather than trying to find better way to kill things.
Re:Why You Don't “Fucking Love Science”
by dnautics on Thursday September 19, 2013 @04:54PM
(#6414228)
Would you feel better if you knew DARPA was spending money on pie in the sky ways of killing things if "things" was bacteria and viruses?
Maybe if "things" were mosquitos...
Re:Why You Don't “Fucking Love Science”
by Gravityloss on Thursday September 19, 2013 @05:53PM
(#6414551)
Ironically a lot of advances done in secret projects are lost forever. Some may be declassified after 50 years.
A lot more goes on than just "researching things that kill people." The Joint Strike Fighter, for example, is a sophisticated, state-of-the-art aeronautics platform. Advances discovered while working on it can end up applying to everything from advanced crypto to materials science to acoustics research.
Also, let's conveniently ignore the fact that defense research spending dwarfs the NASA budget by an order of magnitude, and has potential to be just as important to "science" as a whole.