I like Hawkwind a lot. You can probably extrapolate my stance on space programs in general from that.

NASA is art. It is the highest expression of art - it is at once the most pointless thing the human race has ever done, and the greatest thing the human race has ever done.

I fail to really see the utility of manned spaceflight. It was an immense achievement to land on the moon, something every human being should be proud of.

And yet manned spaceflight is several orders of magnitude more expensive than sending a robotic probe to do the job. It's also a huge risk to take. Our greatest advances in scientific knowledge have come from unmanned probes, things like the Hubble and so forth. The fact Voyager I has left the solar system and is still communicating with us is surely as amazing an achievement (and surely more valuable) than landing on the moon.

In short, increase NASA's budget but use it to send out probes. Let's go to Europa and find some motherfucking moon sharks.

Sure, it's risky, but I think it's a risk that everyone who went into space was perfectly willing to take. I know I'd be happy to face a slow death in the icy vacuum for the chance to hit a few golf balls on Mars. And the cost is irrelevant; what does a few billion dollars in savings matter, if that means the robots will have all the fun?

I fail to see much utility in manned space exploration at all until we understand how to get mass out of this gravity well without using chemical rockets. It could be any technology, but the current system is pretty useless as it can't be made to scale up without serious and irrevocable consequences to the planet.

What we are trying to do now is explore the new America from Europe using big rowboats. It's not stupid, but it is short sighted. A sail at the very least is necessary, and a nuclear powered sub makes it a trivial operation. What we are doing now is literally putting the cart before the horse.

Astronauts engage the public, human exploration engages the public. For the cost of a fraction of the Department of Defense.

We learn broad universal science from robots, and that is great. But when we decide to drag humans along, we have to learn so much about ourselves biologically and create new technologies just to survive, the temperatures, radiation, the level of gravity. Those breakthroughs have had and will continue to have a big impact on the rest of humanity on a very tangible level.

I see it like this (today):

1. Life always seeks its laziest, most efficient energy state. For spaceflight, that would be robots only while we sit here and eat.
2. Nature has killed every living thing that has ever lived on earth ever.
3. We probably should be a different kind of life.

Regarding NASA and the future of propulsion, see VASIMR:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/future_propu lsion.html

I fail to see the utility of making "utility" the principle measure of human achievement.

Plus everything Neil said.

There won't ever be another government sponsored man on the moon, because it would be either black or a woman, and they'd fuck up the moon for white guys with flat tops.

What RockBolt said. I'd also add that whenever there's a budget type discussion, so this applies to everything including social programs, people like to pretend that there's not a lot of money to go around and that we should settle for cutting NASA's budget because... hey, you can't have everything.

Meanwhile, it's difficult to get people to even consider cutting something from that 21%+ of the budget that nobody even needs.

Those are fair points, Rockbolt. I'd argue that astronauts engaging the public is a double edged sword. When something fucks up and people die, there is usually a backlash.

I guess it comes down to the fact that in tne cost to tangible benefit ratio, robots win out. We've learned so much about our universe and the laws that govern it and we've only scratched the surface. Maybe I'm just missing my sense of wonder but I'm fascinated far more by the fact Europa might have an ocean than I am by the ISS or even Apollo.

Unfortunately in reality budgets are a zero sum game; increasing funding for one thing means decreasing it for another. I wouldn't mind seeing a permanent base on the moon but I'm just not engaged by going to Mars right now. Think of all that money that could be spent on multiple space probes teaching us so much!