Huge waste of money suggests two things: we don't get anything out of it and that it is a hue sum of money to begin with. I don't believe our current funding and what we get out of it (shuttle program alone) is substantial. Spy satellites and gps are two things you benefit from the funding of NASA.

Some conservatives do think we don't get anything out of it because there is a belief that private industry can get the job done cheaper and faster. This is an interesting moment in space exploration because we will now find out how well this plays out with the numerous private enterprises of there. It should be noted however that all space missions are built with free market production and so we are already benefitting from free market efficinecsies.

Are there wastes in NASA? I'm going to say that the James Webb is a good example of what we perceive as waste. The costs keep going up and up for what seems like an open pocketbook to some. Here is the issue related to cost overruns in government technology jobs: the job is conceptualized at year 0. It starts to get built at year 5: in those intervening 5 years, technology has grown. So much so that it would greatly help the mission. So they try to incorporate the new tech. That takes more money. But the thing we need to remember is that the things NASA is doing are the scope of things never been done before. And this stuff is hard. They don't have a job of doing what other people have done before. It is almost ALL things NOBODY has done before. So it should be acceptable that things take longer than usual and cost more. I'm in special effects. Sometimes we get asked to do things NOBODY has done before. And the producers understand that. And it always goes over budget. If we were accountants reconciling accounts then yeah, don't go over budget but NASA Is not balancing a checkbook. They are sending shit to space.

If you want to understand how hard this is, look at China's moon rover. It died in days.

India did send a probe to Mars for pennies on the NASA dollar but everything it's doing is what we did 15 years ago. We could send one that cheaply too.

What NASA does is hard and they are the best at it. Now, do we value what comes out of NASA? That's best answered by someone who knows what NASA contributes to science better than I.