pic: Discovery Bon Voyage

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Barry Bonzack

Financial classes teach if the Net Present Value is greater than 1, invest in the activity.

Many financial classes also teach that, in black and red with all other assumptions held equal, the investor can't already be over-leveraged into crushing debt before the investment returns the value. This is an objective anecdote from my degree, not my opinion.

That aside, I've already enlightened several coworkers on the significance of NASA's contributions to the private sector as a whole. Irrespective of one's philosophy on 'human sustainability', NASA's lifetime ROI is ridiculously net-positive when one considers the derivative works from technologies driven by NASA's exploration objectives. The murkiness for the Congressional budget line-items comes from the fact that it's difficult to directly associate higher-derivative works to the specific budget items NASA wants. So Congress has to be convinced.

All of that aside...

Personally I'm still ecstatic about the James Webb telescope and it's ability to use super conductors due to the cryogenic nature of the whole setup. Who wants to see back in time? <----- this guy