Part of the experiment actually involves using this thing for microgravity experiments (also gaining knowledge about operations of space labs). Unless you have an antigrav generator handy or suggest science should be done in a vomit comet, I'd say it's important.
BTW. one of the important research done in orbit I recently learned about is figuring out how plants sense gravity. There were some cool results wrt. that, and this is the kind of research that is both important and hard to do on the surface.
My original argument was that the ROI is debatable in terms of how much we spend on space these days. Is it worth billions of dollars for the things we have talked about? Probably not in the grand scheme of things (Im not knocking space, or research just the fact that people bitch about how little we spend when it sort of makes sense to me).
Yes, but you have done the equivalent of walking into a lab and complaining that what they are doing isn't cutting edge enough, as you looked at an experiment and all it did was change a flame from yellow to blue, before it being pointed out that you were just looking at a bunsen burner.
BTW. one of the important research done in orbit I recently learned about is figuring out how plants sense gravity. There were some cool results wrt. that, and this is the kind of research that is both important and hard to do on the surface.