Mark Jackson is the founder of Fiat Physica. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The U.S. budget crises over the last decade have been particularly harsh to physics and astronomy. In 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope was nearly defunded until public outcry ensured its continuing operation. In 2011, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee tried to cancel NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, only for it to be saved by the U.S. Senate at the last moment.

That same year, the NASA Constellation Program was not so lucky. The five-year, $9 billion project was intended to succeed NASA's Space Shuttle Program and usher in a new era of human spaceflight. Many people anticipated that this project would lead to astronauts not only returning to the moon, but venturing as far into deep space as Mars. Deemed too expensive and behind schedule, it was removed in the 2011 federal budget.

In the face of a global economic downturn, one might ask why such astronomy funding should be a priority at all. My personal viewpoint one that I believe is shared by many people is that, if we do not try to understand our place in the universe, what point is there in doing anything else? But the public and Congress often need other, more tangible, reasons. For them, here's the best possible answer: Space research is an excellent technological and financial investment.

A vested interest in investment

In 1962, NASA established the Technology Utilization Plan, which makes NASA technologies available to the commercial marketplace. The research pioneered at NASA has led to nearly 1,800 spinoff technologies, including cellphone cameras, breast-cancer detection software, and airplane wing design so efficient it has saved more than 2 billion gallons of jet fuel.

For every dollar invested in NASA, spinoff technologies have boosted the economy by $7 to $14. If Americans want the next generation to continue to benefit from such technological developments, we need to invest in the space research of today.

Just as crowdsourcing has emerged as a new way to solve immense scientific problems, crowdfunding is emerging as a way to address the immense scientific funding crisis. Crowdsourcing, in which many participants use the Internet to contribute bits of content toward a larger goal, has allowed problems of previously insurmountable scale to be efficiently analyzed and solved. Astronomy has been at the forefront of this "citizen science" approach.

For example, Galaxy Zoo invites the public to classify galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which then led to the Zooniverse, a collection of citizen-science projects in all areas of science (and even the humanities) that currently boasts more than 1 million members.

Crowdfunding physics and astronomy

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Can Crowdfunded Astronomy Work? (Op-Ed)