How do you feel towards NASA pushing for more space exploration?

So with the recent landing of the Mars Science Laboratory's Rover (Curiosity) I was wondering how everyone else feels about the touchy subject of space exploration.  Submit your reason for your vote

Most of the technology we use today came from the space program so as long as there continues to be benefit to society I support it.  I do think we need more checks and balances with regards to how the money is spent and what the ultimate benefit is.

I know a lot of technology that is spent in the space program also carries over to the military so in effect we're partially funding the military with the NASA budget which I'd like to see more transparency on.

Space exploration should be a priority.  Fighting pointless wars is a way bigger waste of money than space exploration.

Fighting pointless wars against terrorists and those that threaten the United States is pointless?  Be glad you have Americans such as myself willing to die for your freedoms.  I find it sad that you think space exploration is more important to you then protecting the country you live in.  Let's take all the money out of the DoD and put it into space exploration and when we get attacked like we did on 9/11 again please take some time out of your day to re-answer this question with a little more thought.

I agree with this statement 100%.  You are pretty much saying that your freedom is pointless because without fighting these wars and stopping terrorist you would more than likely have no freedom or worse, not exist.  I have spent over 8 years in active duty service and my brother is a Purple Heart veteran of the Army and you are saying my career and his commitment to our country are pointless.  Anyone who thinks what our military is doing and the lives we are risking is pointless in mindless in my opinion.  I hope you have a very interesting reason behind your point of view without it being the basic "it's stupid" or "it's not our war" comments.

By the way, I am all for space exploration but I also don't think it should take any higher priority.  This is not an option in the poll so I did not vote.

What? Why didn't the U.S. invade Saudi Arabia then?

What did Iraq have to do with 9/11.

When did Iraq threaten the U.S.A.

What did Saddam have to do with 9/11?

I'm not saying that the service men and women from ALL OVER THE WORLD are doing something pointless, but there's a bit of a misunderstanding there, isn't there?

I'm sorry, you are right...Osama Bin Laden was CLEARLY in Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan followed by Pakistan.  Why the hell would we invade Saudi Arabia?

Secondly, The war in Iraq was a mistake and our government along with the UN have admitted they made mistakes in their accusations that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction.  UN inspectors were misled into believing the Iraqi's possessed these weapons.  When we initially invaded that country we had the backing of the UN.  We continued that "conflict" to help rebuild that country.  The Iraqi government misled the UN that they possessed these weapons hence threatening the US and their interest abroad.  President George W. Bush admitted he hastley pushed the UN into invading Iraq.

I'm not going to answer your third question since it is purely there to instigate a further argument.  If you believe at any moment Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11 then you a victim of our misled media.

And finally what is the misunderstanding?  My original response was in reference to diverting funds away from the UNITED STATED DoD to future space exploration.  This presents an immediate lack of defense to this country and hence why I felt my first response was neccessary in defending our troops along with your freedoms.

I don't think I could have said it any better.  As the United States military we sometimes have to take steps to reach an ultimate goal.  I believe as motown88 was saying that it worked out nicely as we did find Osama in Pakistan.  Just because some steps are drastic doesn't mean they are not right.  We have freedoms in the US and belive that everyone in this world should have a right to the same freedoms.

Did you know where Osama was?  If so, maybe we wouldn't have had to enter so many countries.  Man, are you telling me this whole thing could have been over years ago?

I certainly don't think we should cut the entire DoD and use all the money for space ex, but the amount we spend on defense is excessive, IMHO, and there is room for cuts.  It's ridiculous to take the suggestion of cuts to the military as wanting to abandon the troops, and similarly, not supporting our wars DOES NOT equal not "supporting the troops."

Exactly my point.  Thank you.  Invading Iraq had nothing to do with protecting us from terrorists.  Im also not saying that we should cut our entire defense budget but I also think theres much better ways that we could spend our money than in maintaining a strong military.

Exactly.  I support the troops, I just dont always support the policies that put them in harm's way.  Id also agree that theres lot of excesses in defense spending.

Bummer ... I thought this thread was going to be about our current visit to Mars, et. al.

As someone who's early childhood coincided with the boom in manned spaceflight and later went on to have the early part of my career as an engineer in unmanned and manned space flight programs for commercial, NASA, and DoD applications, I'm certainly a bit skewed toward the value of space flight development.    But I feel at this point some of the priorities across the board are somewhat misplaced and that we should really be looking at how monies should be most effectively allocated.

I'd keep NASA's budget about the same, but would like to see them reduce the spending on deep space and moon-based initiatives somewhat and refocus those monies into near space efforts including a greater focus on earth sciences.   As a related element, I think NOAA should not be a separate agency and should be combined with NASA to create a more effective agency focused on planetary science and exploration which includes our own planet.   The issues of clean air and water are going to become severe in the future if we do not do more to address the degradation caused by a continually growing global population, and we need to seed the science now.

On the defense side, I feel there is has been too much pork barrel politics in our defense budget allocation that results in enormous monies spent on areas that really aren't making our nation or the rest of the world more secure.   This issue certainly isn't new and it's massive growth can be traced back to Eisenhower's warnings of the military industrial complex, but it does seem that this problem is even more entrenched now.     I would re-prioritize the defense spending to focus better on the threat needs for the next 10 years and reduce the overall defense budget by dropping the efforts that aren't aligned with the greatest priorities.

Taking that money saved from defense, I would reallocate it to a combination of increased spending in climate studies and earth sciences, health services, and nationwide infrastructure including not only hard infrastructure like highways and bridges but also telecommunications infrastructure like broadband for all.

On a related note, I always get perturbed when I hear people complain that we should cut spending in things like defense and space and instead use it to create jobs.   Where do these people think the money is going to?   Those expensive space and defense programs cost money because it goes to people working on those programs - it is a jobs program.   And the costs spent on engineers, scientists, etc. is very highly leveraged in creating further jobs.   I recall studies that indicate that normal job creation is leveraged by about 2 to 3x, i.e. one job created also creates 2 to 3 other jobs in the process (for example grocers to feed people, builders to build their homes, etc.).   But the highly paid professional jobs such as those on NASA programs has a highly leverage of up to 5x.     When we fund a NASA program that employs 1000 people, we're really creating 5000 jobs in the process.

OK, off my soapbox now.......