[My2Cents]

Cost of a typical shuttle mission: $500 million

Value of spin-off technologies from the US space program: Hundreds of billions of dollars

Value of your cynicism: Worthless

[Voltage]

And the value of ant's tunneling in zero gravity? Billions?

[Hanging Chad]

"...Cost of a typical shuttle mission: $500 million
Value of spin-off technologies from the US space program: Hundreds of billions of dollars..."
- - -
I, and I am not being cynical, just don't believe it.
I would put the money elsewhere and shut it all down until
somebody had a worthwhile reason for doing space exploration.
(other than just, "Because we can.")

[Atlas Sneezed]

Cost of a typical shuttle mission: $500 million

Value of spin-off technologies from the US space program: Hundreds of billions of dollars

What spinoffs can we expect from the next 50 shuttle missions? (And your mission cost estimate is low by half, compared to others I have seen.) What benefits did we get from the past 50 missions?

[Voltage]

Cost of a typical shuttle mission: $500 million

Value of spin-off technologies from the US space program:

Hundreds of billions of dollars Value of your cynicism: Worthless

OK, lets see how your math works out: $500 million creates $200,000 Million. That's a multiplier of 400 times. The US GDP is about $10 Trillion. So if we did 50 space shuttle launches per year we would double the nations GDP?

That would be quite a few cases of the new foam product we can buy at Walmart as a benefit of the space program!

If you want to support the space program it would be better if you came up with real benefits, ones which are produced more economically by the way you favor.

Silly little side effects won't cut it!