http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNxnCzz5oQE
This video shows that we take out national budget and throw it into projects that won't make a contribute to society in the next decade or two. Let's change this as the people of the United States of America. Let's make the president work for the people instead of saying erroneous things such as we will send someone to Mars in x amount of years when he is not in office and when someone else has to come up with the budget to explore the ventures. The universe is an investment. Any investor could tell you that this is a bad investment, but that's because no one has done it before to have quantifiable numbers to make the investment. Think about Columbus...he wanted to go to Asia, but instead found the United States of America by mistake.