I agree with Lileks. I want humanity to go to space. If the government wants to spend money on it, fine; if the government wants to get out of the way and leave it to "ordinary" Americans, even better. I don't care. I don't care how much it costs; I don't care what else doesn't get funded.
I don't want money wasted on stupid space stations that don't go anywhere but in circles (ellipses, shut up). Mars rovers are neat, but we should be scouting for landing sites. The Space Shuttle is a dangerous, pathetic joke that needs to be put down forthwith like a rabid, sickly dog. Quit wasting money taking it to the vet.
Sit back and imagine the type of space program we could have bought for the $400 billion President Bush instead spent on prescription drugs for old people, most of whom can already get the drugs through existing means. What's the International Stupid Station costing in total? $100 billion or so? Geesh. We could easily put a permanent base on the moon and then ship all the old people there for the cost of their prescription drugs.
How about this plan: cut all government funding for everything by 90%, cut taxes by half, and then split the remaining revenue evenly between the DoD and NASA. Oh sure, I know lots of people think NASA's a failure -- there's more work to be done than simply changing the funding around, but you get the idea.
By the way, here's Google's Mars Spirit image.
Here, here.
I almost shivered when I heard about the proposals.
A moonbase in my lifetime? A trip to Mars?
It had gotten easy to lose imagination in the last 20 years.
$400 Billion in drug benefits? Ouch. In a nutshell, that demonstrates the problem with the Mars trips: The drug plan has concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, whereas the manned Mars mission has just the opposite. This is a recurring problem with democracies. No original insight, mind you, but it is still an effective way to view people's reactions to any government proposal.
The only two things to do is to create one or more business plans that will create profitable space ventures in orbit and on the moon that will survive government neglect once they are established. Then we need to get legislation passed that requires NASA to withdraw from any activity that has an economic competitor unless the President signs a waiver and such waivered activity be the narrowest possible scope required to serve the national interest.
Once you get out there and are making money, in energy production, satellite construction, or rocket fuel extraction, normal capitalist fiduciary duty comes into play and people will stay there. At that point, further business plans become much less expensive to execute because you can always hitch a ride on other people's transports in the beginning.
TML: That's always been the problem, bootstrapping. Until launch costs come down by a factor of 10 or so there is no way to make money in space. But no company will finance the research if there's no sure way to make money, &c. (I'm sure you're familiar with this situation.) Which is why NASA has served a useful purpose.
However, as the X-Prize is showing, there are some private people interested in space. I expect that private industry will surpass NASA technologically soon, if that hasn't already happened. NASA will become obsolete on it's own, as long as, as you say, the government doesn't force it upon us.