Justifying investment in Cosmology

[AlexSm11]

How is the large investment spent on say... space missions or large telescopes justified when the country is in a recession?

Can you guys think of any examples of large investments into cosmology that were fruitful/failed?

 

[humanino]

How large is large ? What do you compare when you say "large" ?

It is really up to the US citizens to make their call, but I find it hard to believe how the american society as a whole believes in staying at the leading edge of competition while giving up on research and education.

Can you think of investments which are more important for society as a whole and in the long term than research and education ?

 

[Chalnoth]

How is the large investment spent on say... space missions or large telescopes justified when the country is in a recession?

Can you guys think of any examples of large investments into cosmology that were fruitful/failed?

Investment in pure science has shown, time and again, to provide significant economic payoffs. Those payoffs, if anything, get even better during a recession when private investment is suppressed.

 

[turbo]

Investment in pure science has shown, time and again, to provide significant economic payoffs. Those payoffs, if anything, get even better during a recession when private investment is suppressed.

If you can support any of this, I would love to see the proof.

 

[Chalnoth]

If you can support any of this, I would love to see the proof.

Quite unfortunately, my Google-fu is failing me, and I can't find the studies I'd seen earlier.

However, this can be understood in a few ways:
1. Applied science cannot be done without pure science. And yes, even pure science in cosmology teaches us about many aspects of physics, from gravity to quantum mechanics. One of the fundamental aspects of pure science is that it is done for the pure purpose of learning more about the behavior of the universe, and such pure science always has to lead applied science.
2. In pursuing the boundaries of pure science, we end up having to build very sophisticated instruments that require a variety of new technologies. Many of these technologies end up gaining tremendously important uses in the commercial sector.
3. Finally, the pursuit of pure science involves the education of a large number of people, not that many of whom remain scientists for life, boosting the workforce of intelligent, highly-skilled persons.

 

[KrisOhn]

If you can support any of this, I would love to see the proof.

One that comes to my mind is the application of Brownian Motion to economics.

Edit: I lightly skimmed this article, it describes it: http://mahalanobis.twoday.net/stories/210704/

Then, obviously, there are the huge applications of pure mathematics to economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics

Applications of Statistical Physics to Economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics

Even more stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_and_energy , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_exchange_models_of_markets

It seems to me that there are a huge number of pure science concepts that can be applied to economics.