Sure.

> ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here.

Electricity, internet, radio, engines, cameras, etc.

> JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'?

You're just enforcing my point, this is people who understand that we need technological progress in order for us to move forward as a society. Of course they are part of the progress, they help enable the progress to go faster.

> Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality.

It is my belief that this will never happen, at least not untill we have progressed so far that everyones needs are met. Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality. Just look at history, we've never been able to do this so far so there is no reason to belive that we suddently change our behavior.

I am defining progress as a lot of things, it can be the discovery of something new but it can also be an invention that benefits just a small number of people. In the long run, most new inventions will benefit everyone.

Well, politicians are responsible for progress only in so far as they're responsible for allocating budget and legal support for research. They do not do the work, but they control large amounts of resources that help make it happen[0].

As for questioning the kind of technological advancement and the reactions to it, I think the defensive comments come from a combination of the following:

1. Questioning spending on space exploration in the topic about space exploration is like questioning the existence of football on a football match. You're talking to an audience who loves it and telling them that it takes resources away from More Important Things. Except that space is at the same time much more underfunded and much more important than football, baseball, basketball, movies, concerts, celebrity gossip and all the other stuff people like[1]. So it kind of feels unfair to single it out here.

2. Basic research is increasingly becoming underfunded. The funny thing about solving the world problems with technology is that, more often than not, what enables those technologies is pie-in-the-sky research with no expected immediate results. This doesn't fly well with the markets, and as countries increasingly treat science in the same way market economy does, the funding for long-term research is in ever greater jeopardy. Attacking space exploration through arguments of other more immediate problems is in a big way attacking basic research.

3. People need to dream about better future. Space exploration is somewhat unique that it captures and nourishes the imagination and hope for a better world.

4. We have enough resources to solve the more important problems like clean water and food for all. And yet they are not solved. Taking the meagre few $B from space research will most likely not help in solving those problems, but it will shut down space research.

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[0] - Note that in that they're not unique - theoretically, a private institution with large amounts of resources can do the same thing too. Still, to date, it's usually governments that are willing to spend money on actual research.

[1] - Also, there's plenty of money in wasted military spending that could be taken first, even without reducing the actual military capabilities of a country.