NASA - A complete waste of money

Can someone please explain to me why spending $325 million dollars on the new Phoenix Mars Rover is important?

I have been trying to figure out for the past 5 years or so why NASA is still around – and not in the sense that why are they still in existence. But, why is the government still funding them? What is their purpose?

People have tried to debate me on this for a long time, and I’ve been adamant for a long time that looking into the structure of Mars is not helping the Earth, and it’s especially not helping the American economy.

If you don’t know, NASA is funded by the Department of Defense. That means the money going to these outer space missions could be going to the efforts of the war – or whatever you want to call that thing over in the Middle East. I’m tired of people telling me that it’s important for these missions to go on. In fact, every time I bring this up, I get these NASA purists telling me how necessary it is for the program to be around. Yet, no one can fully answer my question of what they’ve actually accomplished over the past 10-15 years – other than spending billions and billions of dollars looking into the structure of Mars.

Ok, maybe 30-40 years ago, it was important to go to the moon. Maybe, I say. What has going to the moon proved since that time?

Stop giving me these answers about satellites and all this technology mumbo jumbo. Yes, I know exploring space is important for those reasons – we wouldn’t have modern technology, we wouldn’t have cell phones, we wouldn’t have a lot of our favorite television programs – brought to us by satellite TV.

I get that. But, that’s not spending a gazillion dollars on exploring Mars and these other planets in the solar system. Again, what does that have any effect on us? I think we’ve done pretty well without the government jumping in to fix it. Oh yeah, this global warming stuff that’s going on – I see the government really worrying about that. Shouldn’t all this money be spent on figuring out why the Polar Ice Caps are melting? Why it hasn’t snowed on the East Coast more than once in the past 5 years?

What’s going on people? Mars is another planet. Let’s spend money first on our own planet before we go and screw up another one. It’s like I say about human beings – if we worried about what we, ourselves, are doing first before what others are doing we’d be a better society and a better planet. We probably wouldn’t have these wars going on in the first place. Deal with yourself, find out what’s going on with you – not what Joe Schmo is doing.

So to all you NASA people – get off your high horse, and get real. This program has wasted our money for the past 15 years. If we’re so much in debt, why can’t the government step in and say, ‘Wait a minute, why don’t we take some of this stored money for NASA and use it for the war?’ I’m guessing that’s a little bit too much to ask from these politicians – many, of which, probably don’t even know what NASA is exploring to begin with.

I hope this NASA Mars Phoenix Rover touches down safely, as that would just become a huge waste of money if it blows up. But let’s make this one the last.

NASA – your time has come and gone.