James Webb Space Telescope - is it "worth it"?

James Webb Space Telescope has been a very impressive achievement in the scientific and engineering community. Seeing the images created by the data from this craft have been absolutely astounding and awe inspiring for me. I grew up reading books about black holes and the universe from the time I was 8. When I was a kid we didn't know if there even "was" other planets in the universe. To see the advancements that have been made since then is very cool. To see the images of nebulas and galaxies give perspective on how small we are on this planet and to imagine the potential for life elsewhere in the universe. <br><br><br><br>I saw an article about the costs associated with it. 23.2 BILLION?!? I can't even really fathom what you could even spend that kind of money on, let alone in the realm of space exploration. <br><br><br><br>Now I don't think anyone would really argue that this isn't an impressive achievement. It's a massive undertaking that really encompasses human curiosity and ingenuity. I think the question is, at what cost? <br><br>Let's put that money into perspective with some current events that are relatively pertinent to the average person. With the way things are currently, a college education is almost a necessity to be successful. Currently in the US, it is estimated that 43 MILLION borrowers owe a combined 1.755 TRILLION in college loans. That doesn't even take into account private loans that aren't included in that number. Let's just use this as a round about estimate of 2 trillion in college debt. For arguments sake lets just say that the 23.2 billion spent on the JWST could have went to forgiving student loans instead of exploring space. We could have forgiven 4.65% ( lets just round to 5%) of all outstanding college loans. I guess that doesn't seem like a lot but it would probably help a million or so people out. <br><br>Or what about hunger? According to this article from May, the cost of ending hunger is around 30 billion dollars per year. So the amount we spent on JWST could feed everyone for 10 months. <br><br>Or maybe we should look at the homeless problem in the US. According to this article from Forbes, it would take around 20 billion to fix the problem of homelessness in the US. <br><br>I guess my whole point in saying all this is, is that while the advancements that the JWST has brought us are amazing and awesome, I'm not sure if it's worth it at the cost of other current issues. Yes we are working on all these other issues, but I feel like a lot of those issues would be helped by 23 billion dollars. <br><br>I'm not saying that the JWST is a bad thing. I think that it is an amazing thing and I think it will bring us great discoveries in regards to space. I'm just not positive that we should be dumping that kind of money into space exploration when there is so many other real issues in the world that we haven't figured out yet. <br><br>Or am I wrong?<br><br>Edit - thanks for the feedback everyone. I appreciate the different insights this has brought!