This is a gross overstatement. There’s a huge difference between not realizing a couple potentially interesting lines of inquiry in a research program and being “paralyzed by a failure of imagination”. If NASA disappeared tomorrow, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. medical devices industry would hardly suffer from “paralyzed… imagination”.

“That’s faulty reasoning. If you look at any program for a long enough period of time it’ll reach into the multi-hundred billion dollar level eventually.”

What does the timespan of the investment have to do with the argument? Space Shuttle cost something in the low tens of billions to develop and has cost $4-5 billion per year every year to operate since 1982. How can a marginal improvement in a heart pump, or any other medical device, justify the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Space Shuttle?

“In addition to the spinoffs, there are the “it’s in our nature to explore yada yada” arguments I admit I buy into.

Taken together, I think $17.6 billion PER YEAR is very reasonable for the United States.”

That’s an entirely different argument. I’m just arguing that we can’t justify the enormous costs of NASA’s human space flight program on the basis of their medical spinoffs. If we want to argue about what the rationales for NASA’s human space flight program should be and what kinds of dollars those rationales justify, we should start a whole new thread.

FWIW…

“I certainly don’t buy into this argument at the multi-hundred billion dollar level.” That’s faulty reasoning. If you look at any program for a long enough period of time it’ll reach into the multi-hundred billion dollar level eventually.

In addition to the spinoffs, there are the “it’s in our nature to explore yada yada” arguments I admit I buy into.

Taken together, I think $17.6 billion PER YEAR is very reasonable for the United States.

Very likely yes, or something like it. The pumps in the SSME are not radically new technology completely unlike anything else that already existed; turbine pumps have been around for ages. Most technology doesn’t have unique antecedents, and arises multiple times when demand appears, and people have been working on cardiac assist devices for decades.

The example doesn’t support the argument. There was no “direction” to create medical benefits when the SSME was designed and developed. It was an accidental happenstance that some of SSME plumbing was applicable to heart pumps.

If we want a program to design a better heart pump, then let’s fund a program to design a better heart pump. There’s no reason to go through the enormous costs and effort associated with building a new rocket engine that may or may not have any relevance to heart pumps.

“In other words, without the unique venue of spaceflight some people arguably wouldn’t even think of some research areas to pursue–they (and we) would be paralyzed be a failure of imagination.”

I buy into this argument at some level — that the challenges of human space flight stretch biomedical technologies in ways that pure medical research do not. But I buy into at the margin — that maybe a few extra taxpayer dollars should be spent on the challenges of human space flight because of their biomedical spin-offs. I certainly don’t buy into this argument at the multi-hundred billion dollar level. We can’t justify the huge costs of our human space flight program based on accidental biomedical spin-offs (or any other spin-off for that matter).

If the real policy objective is to create new biomedical technologies, then those human space flight dollars are much more effectively and efficiently spent on directly developing new biomedical technologies.

FWIW…

Who goes to an aerospace engineer to get a prescription for their sore throat?

Ugh…