I don’t think so.  NASA’s budget is something like $17 billion per year.  What do we get out of this program?  Frankly, I don’t see a whole lot of benefit to the American people.  Over the last fifty years, NASA has spent over $500 billion dollars cumulatively, and what do we have to show for it?  We allegedly went to the Moon.  We don’t have a shuttle program.  Seems like an awful waste to me.  There is a certain appeal to the space program, but let’s let the private sector take over.  If there’s a market to go to Mars or to build a base on the Moon, let some private entrepreneur or aerospace company spend their money.  I don’t think we should be using tax dollars from American taxpayers to fund a program that is yielding little these days.  I’m always for spending cuts in the federal budget, so let’s cut the spending on NASA as a first step in shrinking the size of the federal government and eliminating wasteful spending, fraud and waste.

Read more here at Thinking Outside The Boxe