Good point, I have no idea what the return will be. However it is still pleasant to be employed as a researcher in this type of environment, and is something I think the US should do more of too, including increasing the funding of NASA. Which leads us to an interesting question of how you even measure the benefit of such things... what was the financial gain returned from landing on the moon, for example? Lots of types of research have no direct financial gain yet still add to the overall progress of society. (Although this point might be straying far from the original intention of the article.)