It's great news that these good men will be able to find employment in their field of interest. It would be a tragedy if this talent pool were lost, or migrated to fields other than astronautics. It's part of the role of government, one which is rarely acknowleged in corporate accounting, to provide training services for the private sector, particularly in high tech. Most airline pilots come from military backgrounds and most nuclear power plant operators started in the Navy's reactor program.

But this "hidden subsidy" actually goes a lot deeper. For example, I got my start in photogrammetry, a technique originally developed for wartime reconaissance, and my work in remote sensing relied entirely on data downloaded from government satellites, and subsidized so it was available to industry at the cost of distribution.

The private benefits of government R&D extend way past Tang and Teflon.