You seem to be missing it. Let me try to break it down again.
First off, plain and simple, we don't know what we don't know. So straightforward it's tautological. It makes sense to expand our knowledge in every direction possible.
This is the MO of a curious species. And curious species are vastly more successful than incurious ones. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, the legacies of incurious species are carefully discovered, studied, and remembered by curious ones. Curiosity is a survival trait.
Dedicating less than 4 parts per million of our country's enormous economic activity toward studying an important part of our stellar neighborhood seems a worthwhile entry in the activities column of a sufficiently curious people. Moreover, the return-on-investment on unbounded curiosity is so close to infinite that it's hard to view complaints about such comparatively tiny expenditures in regards to their practicality or short-term tangible returns as anything other than laughably myopic.
> It makes sense to expand our knowledge in every direction possible.
Not quite: Instead, for any amount of money, there are, or, as we start spending the money on research, soon will be, more candidate research projects than money. So we have to pick and choose our research projects.
IMHO we have better candidate research projects, including just in investigating the solar system, than getting fly-by pictures of Pluto.
Maybe NASA has some longer term ideas for research on Pluto where the recent pictures, and maybe also just the trip there, are just the beginning. Okay, land there, in a bunch of nitrogen snow. Take and analyze some samples and radio the data back to earth. Maybe get some data unique and valuable data on the formation of the solar system, maybe on some gamma ray bursts or super nova explosions, etc. Maybe. But just the pictures? IMHO, not so good.
First off, plain and simple, we don't know what we don't know. So straightforward it's tautological. It makes sense to expand our knowledge in every direction possible.
This is the MO of a curious species. And curious species are vastly more successful than incurious ones. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, the legacies of incurious species are carefully discovered, studied, and remembered by curious ones. Curiosity is a survival trait.
Dedicating less than 4 parts per million of our country's enormous economic activity toward studying an important part of our stellar neighborhood seems a worthwhile entry in the activities column of a sufficiently curious people. Moreover, the return-on-investment on unbounded curiosity is so close to infinite that it's hard to view complaints about such comparatively tiny expenditures in regards to their practicality or short-term tangible returns as anything other than laughably myopic.