Disclaimer: While I am not a huge fan of manned spaceflight in general, I was still in awe of the work done by the astronauts involved in the recent repair mission to the Hubble Space telescope. If I understand correctly this was not a mission that could have been executed by robots the presence of human workers was required.

I am however a much bigger fan of unmanned space missions such as the Rover mission to Mars and to other parts of our solar system. I actually had the immense honor a few years back to support NASA scientists when I worked for a company that sold a high end technical and scientific graphics application, I could think of no finer people to work with.

And while there may be ingrained inefficiencies in any government Bureaucracy, NASA, I'm sure has it's fair share, for someone to claim that it should be shut down because it is a total waste of taxpayer money can only be because the individual making such a statement has no understanding as to why a quest for pure knowledge is one of the most important quests for our species as a whole.

If ever the expression "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" was applicable this most certainly is such a case.

Are you suggesting that we don't need satellite communication (banks and phone calls), the GPS network, solar panels and wind turbines also. Even those air cowlings on trucks were designed by NASA folks. The rocket programs were started by the Nazis so I'm not sure that putting our heads in the sand would have prevented the development of ICBM. Should we have let the Russians do it alone?