What wasn't clear from the post is both missions (Dawn and Kepler) were both successful and lasted well past their intended mission lengths. Specifically, Dawn was finished over a year ago, and at that point they decided that they'd continue to collect data until the fuel ran out - which happened yesterday. Kepler lasted well over twice its designed mission lifetime. Again - "it still works, so we'll use it until the fuel runs out".

Kepler ended up surveying over 500,000 stars and has detected greater than 2600 planets. The data collected will be continued to be used for decades to come to find more planets and other information about the physics of planetary system development. The successor to Kepler, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched in April and just had first-light a couple of months ago.

Dawn was successful as the first NASA probe to use ion drives which let it enter and leave the orbits of the two asteroids. It successfully made maps of both bodies as well as detailed spectroscopic maps in both the infrared and visible spectrums.

Both missions did excellent science, outlived their planned lifetimes and should be celebrated for it.

It should come out to a cost-benefit analysis for you and your family. I'll explain my family's decision to bank my son's cord blood and then try to give you an idea of what you might want to think about in your case.

When my son was born, we did bank the cord-blood. But I'm under no illusions as to any potential benefits.

My wife has a nephew with Cystic Fibrosis. He has no siblings, nor is likely to have any. There is a slim chance that a treatment might be developed within his lifetime that could utilize stem cells from cord blood, and a slim chance that our son could be a close enough match to make it work. Slim chance * slim chance = very slim chance. I also suppose there is a chance that our son could develop something that could be treated in the future from his banked cord blood, but for now all is well.

My in-laws paid 100% of all the cord-bank fees. They let us decide on our own, but let us know they'd pay for it if we decided to do it. In the end it all came to a few thousand dollars.

We decided to do it. It cost us nothing other than a very minor hassle (you've got to get the doctor to do it, not a problem, and then you've got to arrange for the courier. The company made it trivially easy, but you still have to do a phone call). And while there aren't any current benefits, a few thousand dollars is little to pay for the tiny bit of hope it provides my sister-in-law.

But for other people considering it:
0. Realize there are few current benefits that can be derived from this, you're putting away something in the hope that IFF something happens and IFF someone develops a treatment that can utilize this material, you've at least got the raw materials at hand.
1. Can you afford the fees?
2. Do you have an expectation that your son, daughter, or a future sibling might need this? Easy question to answer if genetic screening shows one of the parents carriers for something or the baby is already known to have a problem. Harder if everything seems to be fine right now.
3. Do you have a close relative that this might help?

For us, the cost issue didn't matter, and we had an easy "yes" answer to #3, so the hardest thing was researching the options and choosing the company.

Would we have banked it if my in-laws hadn't paid for it? Probably not.
Would we have banked it if we didn't have a nephew with a severe genetic disorder? Probably not.
But we did have these conditions, so it was an easy decision.

I wish you luck and good heath for you and your family.

- Steve