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.
