Quote Originally Posted by Magmar View Post
When I was a kid, I loved astronomy, but I'm glad I didn't go into it as a field now.

We need to spend that money elsewhere. There are far too many perfectly capable but broke-ass people in America to worry about spending billions on a space program. Our kids need education more importantly, and we need to find a way to create jobs here rather than send them all elsewhere.
We're not going to educate our kids any better and we're not going to create more jobs by nickel-and-diming the space program into oblivion. What are we going to educate our kids about if we're not showing them where humanity is headed next, showing them what steps we're taking to get there? We've traveled the bottom of the ocean, touched the sky at the peak of Mt. Everest, we've split the atom and walked on the moon... we have to keep going. There's plenty to discover here, but that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to the majesty happening over our heads. For every item down on Earth, there's ten million more above the delirious burning blue. We're in desperate need of the inspiration. We need to inflame hearts and stir souls. To me, that's worth the money spent, even on the rockets that blow up.