Your point about efficient allocation is very good. I find it hard to quantify what we need without a goal.

Politically, it's hard to engage emotionally without some sort of story. I vastly prefer adventurous explorers to fierce warriors. Maybe we will do something sane without the space story, and that would be great.

I do think there are fundamental problems with defense research. The NSA did great stuff, didn't they invent RSA? but they couldn't tell anyone about it. That system has intrinsic biases about secrecy that aren't useful.

I'll agree space isn't optimal, but they broadcast their successes as widely as possible. As far as i can tell, nasa is open about technology and research. Military success is grisly, and likely secret. Space biases technology to being small, light, and versatile. These aren't bad things. The military on the other hand will throw thousands of warm bodys at solving problems. Ships can be built with a handful of crew, but that dosn't have the prestige of a supercarrier with 6k guys.

I think a space context also thinks a lot harder about failure detection and recovery.

Anywho - i don't think we disagree. Thanks for the thought provoking point of view.