The James Webb Infrared Telescope gets almost as much
media coverage as Donald Trump. The difference is that the
orbiting telescope is supposedly telling us about things that
happened millions of years ago and millions of light years
away while the Trump narrative has immediate complications
for everyone.
Spending millions in taxpayer funding to acquire information
that is of no possible use to any living human while neglecting
the mundane condition of heavily traveled highways, underfed
and diseased humans, world-wide migration and impending
warfare smacks more of religion than science.
This is distributing the wealth of the mass of the uninterested
for the benefit of a small portion of academia and the
information that astronomers gain doesn't do them any good
either.
According to NASA the four goals of the Webb Infrared
Telescope are to 1. search for light from the first stars and
galaxies that formed in the universe after the Big Bang, 2.
study galaxy formation and evolution, 3. understand star
formation and planet formation, 4. study planetary systems
and the origins of life.
Even if the telescope could acquire accurate information about
the light from the first stars, galaxy formation, star and planet
formation and planetary systems and the origins of life, this
information can be of no practical use to anyone, including the
astronomers involved. The information can't be used to make
decisions other than funding for more expensive and
meaningless deep space investigation. While private parties
should be free to indulge in this kind of science it's very wrong
to use public money, extracted by force from the non-academic
portion of society, to finance it.
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