Copenhagen Hypocrisy Watch, NASA edition

I don't really want to jump on the "look, they are getting nothing accomplished" bandwagon because they are getting something accomplished: they are stimulating the economy of Copenhagen.

Which leads me to my next point: is NASA merely a thinly veiled method the US government uses to stimulate the economy? Nearly 75% of their budget goes to private contract work, like building satellites, building components for the ISS, buying fuel for the shuttle fleet, buying parts for the shuttle fleet, paying private firms to perform R&D, etc etc. Only a small amount goes to pay the salaries of NASA employees and to maintain government owned facilities (and much of that maintenance is spent on private contractors).
So it could be easily argued that NASA's purpose is not to explore space but rather to stimulate the tech sector of this country.

Couple this with NASA's recent pledge to push for more space privatization, and you begin to see that NASA really doesn't have a purpose, other than to promote technology through tax dollar allocation.

I am not saying I have a problem with this; many high quality research firms receive much-needed funding from NASA; however many NASA projects (as I love to mention) are money-pits that cost ten to twenty times what they should, have ballooning timelines, and no real purpose other than to fill paragraphs in press releases.
If NASA is truly a means to explore space, then by all means, spend the money exploring space. But if NASA is a means to provide economic stimulus via technology spending, then they might as well close NASA and turn it into a government program like the NIH.


_