I remember watching the very first space shuttle launch in England with our group of exchange students. They were very upset that the "bloody yanks" were going to pull a major space undertaking like this off.
At the time it was fun to see how worked up they were but I'm glad this big waste of money is finally coming to an end. The cost of putting humans in space (and where the shuttle goes isn't really what I consider "space") is just too high.
The NASA budget is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the defense budget and entitlement programs. In my opinion, I don't think it's getting enough funding. The future of the human race is among the stars.
Agree about the defense budget, makes me mad every time I think about it. Entitlements is a management problem but the size of "defense" is just insanity.
As a percentage of GDP, it is only about 5%, granted everyone else is around 2.5%, but if you look at the numbers for example, in world war 2, we were spending about 40% of the GDP.
In actuality we could spend like this perfectly easily and support 'entitlements', we just have to raise taxes...
At the time it was fun to see how worked up they were but I'm glad this big waste of money is finally coming to an end. The cost of putting humans in space (and where the shuttle goes isn't really what I consider "space") is just too high.