Working as a software developer in radio astronomy, I frequently get asked the same question. Where's the value in spending half a billion euros on a massive telescope array? I struggle to understand how people cannot simply accept the answer: to know more!
This article will definitely help me to explain the value of radio astronomy and science in general in a more succinct and 'useful' way.
>I struggle to understand how people cannot simply accept the answer: to know more!
When you say that, people are thinking "so would you let people die unnecessarily, JUST so you can know more?". What's important about knowing more? It's useful for its entertainment and curiosity-satisfying properties, but that ranks far lower than stuff like people starving.
So I'd counter - where's the value of spending half a billion Euros on a few blockbuster movies? Or 10% of an Olympics game? Why do you want a right to watch soccer games and want to deny me right to knowing more about the universe around us?
That being said, I'd go back to explaining very carefully how everything we have around us is built on top of people doing weird stuff just to know more.
This article will definitely help me to explain the value of radio astronomy and science in general in a more succinct and 'useful' way.