(I'm not in the age-old debate about "is research useful ?" - I agree the answer is yes ; I just have a failure of imagination that prevents me from answer the question "how is this research going to be useful in the long run ?")
LIGO needs extremely precise lasers, stationary platforms, extreme positioning precision, tons of supporting software - even if things "exist", the _need_ for results provide advances and improvements
astronomy itself already gave us cmos sensors (aka digital cameras) - but using your phone camera doesn't really make you think "this is caused by distance measurement to the stars"
Maybe it should!
There's so many technologies that we use today that derive from astronomy, space exploration and similar. We don't do a good job making that point to folks.
We still need fusion reactors, flying cars, telepathy and a cure for cancer yesteryear.
Instead we had 140 characters, PFAS in everything (which make the cure for cancer even more overdue) ; cars that got very much not flying but very bigger (and made the world hotter, and the fusion even more overdue) ; smartphone that makes spreading lies faster than even telepathy could ever do, etc...
But, now, sure, our flying drones are guided with "A", so the authoritarian régimes only have to point in a vague direction to get innocent people bombed.
No wonder "Yay, science" is getting a hard rep.
Thank the FSM you Americans decided to stop doing science altogether. Maybe the world needs to see that "bad research" is worse than "no research at all".
Last time we did that in Europe, it only lasted for 1000 years, and got us cool looking castles and dramatic paintings. So, art, I guess ?