| Chris, I know this is a waste of time, but assuming that GPS or Sat Phones or better weather predicion would not have been invented if not as part of NASA's boondoggle is crazy. Your examples are also inaccurate.
(GPS was developed and is still maintained by the Department of Defence. The current GPS was an outgrowth of Transit, a Navy satellite system originated in the 1950s. The spaceprogram may have utilized the same technology but did not develop it.)
As tman_ndsu08 so accurately points out, all the space program has done is to divert money out of the economy. If those resources remained in the marketplace, who knows what technology might have been developed if the space program had not existed. The secondary benefits of the space program have to be less than would have occurred independently if left to the marketplace.
Rick
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Sinclair Lewis |