There are also facts we know and things we’ve built because someone watched a manned space flight as a kid and decided to go work in STEM because it’s just so freaking cool. Discounting “inspiration” on the grounds that it has no immediate, tangible results is pretty shortsighted.
Also if you’re willing to count facts like “details of Martian geology” as potentially valuable, then one can also say that by doing manned space flight we have learned a lot about how to transport humans to space and keep them alive there, no?
I'm not "discounting" "inspiration", I'm saying that the upthread comment only makes sense if you choose the correct definition for "inspiration", which makes the argument sort of specious.
The simple truth is that there are quantifiable justifications for preferring spending finite resources on science instead of manned space flight. The metrics used might be subjective (because at the end of the day everything is subjective), but that doesn't make them merely "inspiration".
Again, what you're doing is playing a semantic trick with words to respond to what is clearly an almost wholely objective opinion held by other people. That doesn't work. You declaring something "inspiration" does nothing to convince me that launching humans into orbit isn't a ridiculous waste of money.
Even accepting this premise, there's no reason to pick the most expensive option for manned spaceflight.
The ISS cost $100 billion to launch and assemble (and $3 billion to maintain). Tiangong about $8 billion, reportedly. Mir, some $4-5 billion.
The total project cost of Dragonfly mission to Titan (to be launched in 2027 and landing 2034) is projected to be $1 billion. Even the JWST, which had massive cost overruns, still only cost $10 billion. If the NASA built a Tiangong instead of an ISS, who knows what they could have done with the remaining $90 billion. Maybe for a few billion, they could have sent a probe to Europa to search for life under the ice.
Also if you’re willing to count facts like “details of Martian geology” as potentially valuable, then one can also say that by doing manned space flight we have learned a lot about how to transport humans to space and keep them alive there, no?