Alain Fournier wrote:
Brad Guth wrote :

True, that perhaps at most 0.1% of our mostly public-funded astronomy
and off-world explorations has materialized into at least something we
have benefited from. How about the other 99.9% that hasn't paid off,
outside of all the usual insider job and benefit security?

The pay off of that kind of science is very difficult to establish.
Off-world exploration and astronomy can bring once in a while great
advancements with very important consequences, but most of the time it
brings up mostly things that are fun and cool to know about or even
complete failures. The problem is that it is very difficult to decide
before hand what is the 0.1% which will pay off and what is the 99.9%
which will just show cool stuff or simply fail (I use here your numbers,
0.1% and 99.9%, without implying that they are accurate figures). I
wouldn't consider foolish a government who would decide not to fund
astronomy neither would I consider foolish a government who does.

One of the goals of good government is to expand the bounds of the
civilization that government resides in. This can be literal expansion
in the form of colonization or figurative expansion in the form of
culture. Government expends money for non-monetary ends. Some such
expenditure is pouring money into the coffers of the poor and
unproductive citizenry in the knowledge that some in the next generation
will be productive. Some such expenditure is building the future.
Science funding is rather like arts funding in that sense. It projects
culture into the future.

A government that does not look to the future is the government of a
declining people. A person that does not look to the future pulls their
culture down.