The main benefactors were the contractors building the thing.
Having worked in the gov't and specifically in science within the gov't, this issue is certainly a problem but it is not tied directly to any project. I believe the contracting system use by the US gov't must be reevaluated and altered severely.
It is my opinion, though based on seeing massive waste first hand, that the gov't could operate more efficiently and each project run at much smaller cost, by doing away with contractors and instead hiring people directly into an organization which does the research and builds material.
Right now contracting is used to pretend like the gov't isn't as big as it is. You "reduce" an org, but then must fulfill the service using contractors which cost more than having people in house to start with.
is that the results to be gained would jusitify the costs of maintaining it.
Putting the contractor issue aside (and yes the "pork" specifically to aid states, rather than research), I am not sure how the above can be measured on any specific project from the beginning in some objective fashion. What may seem esoteric and gains minimal to you, may actually have vast practical value and produce gains once discoveries are made.
I suppose that is the whole point of exploration in the first place. One cannot be sure if it is lost money, or something that will bring back riches. Some of the safe bets may be totally worthless, and some of the longshots turn out things we could not have foreseen in advance but change the world forever.
If I understood you correctly ou have suggested that studying the earth would be more practical than particle physics, yet the earth is made of particles. Everything is made of particles. Discovering their makeup may deliver insight into processes which allow us to create new materials and technologies. Especially in this case we are dealing with creation and control of matter/antimatter particles, which can help point to where the earth (universe) came from and what might lie in store in the future.
I agree that money is limited and practical concerns are important when selecting where to spend money. I just disagree that prime research is necessarily less practical. It may be a longer shot, but it also usually involves creation of new technology and its potential gains may be more than anything where the practical gains can be fully identified up front.
The space station differed from the SSC, in that it could have been replaced by something else (like a moon base) and achieved the same result. Or if we were going to mainly use robotic exploration of the solar system there was no point in it at all. The same cannot be said for the SSC. To continue in that direction of exploration of the universe we need to get higher tech, higher energy.
I guess this is to say the ISS was not crucial to space exploration, yet the SSC (or something along those lines) is crucial to elementary matter exploration.
holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)
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