I just had a chat with someone who was concerned about spending money on sending a probe to Jupiter. So I took a few minutes to explain why NASA is important, and while Jupiter itself may not grant vast advances in our technologies, the process of making new probes and delivery systems will have a more immediate affect on available technology.
So what has NASA done for us today? You cannot go through a day of your life if your American or from another country, where NASA has not impacted your life. Sure there is the shifting from 8 planets to 9 and back to 8 again, the whole moon landing, but these are not truly important to most.
What about the stuff you use daily? How about ball point pens, fire retardants, medical breakthroughs, sunglasses, fuel storage and delivery systems. There are also bicycles, water purifiers, air scrubbers, and several other products that use technology derived from NASA research.
NASA research in aerodynamics have lead to cars to get better gas millage and keep air ticket prices down.
In fact NASA has come up with several advanced materials that are lighter, stronger, more resilient. These materials and their properties would take ages to list and explain, or even present their value. One example is open-cell polyurethane. Invented by NASA so you can get a good night of sleep (Maybe that is not the real WHY, but it is a result). It is also used in football helmets to keep those guys safe, in hospitals to relieve people in pain, race cars, airplanes.
Still not convinced, sure GPS would have eventually come out, NASA is not the only space agency, nor was it. In fact if we did not step up to the space race, the USSR would have the corner stone on much of the technologies mentioned. It may have even been enough to put them in the top running, and the US would be left wanting. In many ways I could argue that the fall of the USSR would have been very unlikely if not for NASA.
Much of the military technology used today and even over the last couple of decades comes from satellites and space exploration. Several materials used to defend our troops directly relate to research to keep our space craft from burning up in reentry.
One last technology I would love to touch on: ROBOTICS!!!!! NASA has advanced robotics dramatically, I mean manned missions sound great, but beyond the moon or local space it is just not realistic (yet). So they work with robot slaves to do their bidding (Sure they may eventually uprise and wipe us out, but they would be cool doing it.) If we are talking cool, we can't forget lasers, I mean "lasers". Lasers and light reception is a major part of NASA, and everything is better with lasers.
NASA has one major flaw, it gave away much of the technology it was responsible to, and thus could not claim patent fees from manufacturers. Why, because this is the way the government works, it finds new technologies, and allows the public to manufacture those. This means the government continues to flip the bill for future exploration, and the people wonder why they spend so much on space.
Just to restate the point. It is not about space for most people, sure space is cool, and many of us are in to that. It is all about the advanced required to explore space and how they impact our day to day lives.
References:
* http://www.nasa.gov
* http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/nasa-inventions/nasa-high-tech-products2.htm
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