Honestly? I think the space program is, hands-down, one of the most important projects in government.
Others have already said it, so I'll just reiterate: we need to learn to live elsewhere. We don't know when, but eventually the Earth will become unfriendly to human life for one reason or another. Maybe it will be in 100 years, maybe it will be in 100 million years, but it will happen. There is no time to waste.
I really have a hard time understanding why we don't have moon bases yet. I have an even harder time understanding why we haven't even set foot on the moon in nearly 40 years. It's absolutely appalling. I view the moon as our stepping stone to Mars. Cheaper to launch from there, and after having established moon bases we might have a better idea of how to make the trip work. If we had actually kept up an appropriate pace, I think we could have had humans arriving on Mars right around now - maybe in the next 5 years - but we're almost 40 years behind now.
And I'll admit, there's a certain selfishness to my opinion as well. I see that we haven't set foot on the moon in almost 40 years, and that human exploration of space has been stalling, and I feel cheated. I feel cheated because my generation
could have been the first generation to take space vacations. Instead, it will be the generation after mine... if we're lucky.
Keep fighting the good fight,
supersix2. I would love nothing more than to help insulate the NASA mission from political whims.