Gator, I will apologize before hand for my shitty grammar and sentence structure. Happy now? Anyway, I agree exactly with this. I think the technology that we have gotten along the way with program has helped us. However, launching shuttles, building shuttles, searching for signs of life elsewhere, studying different planets, drilling into different planets, and trying to race different countries, has been a giant waste of time and money. It would have been nice if we could have gained that technology and the other helpful features while bypassing the other money pits. I don't see how finding out what Mercury is made out of has helped our economy in anyway.
Sorry. I didn't mean to belittlemotize your use of the term "waken". You're maken me very happy. Conspiracy theories? Asthma and people that say "I know you don't like cats, but you'll love MY cat. He doesn't act like a normal cat!"
The entire shuttle program since the late 60s is estimated to have cost a TOTAL of $174 billion - or, about 10% of what we've spent in the last decade fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect the death tally against NASA is a little lower, too, but that's just a gut feeling. I think you could be more concerned with other expenditures than this level of expense on a program driving technological innovation, education, miniaturization and fields of study based on explaining the origins of the universe. Maybe that's just me.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You clearly need to examine your priorities, sir. I can think of no better way of spending hundreds of millions of dollars than by lobbing loads of missiles at a country that we had no small hand in fucking up. Why bother investing money into better, safer energy sources when we obviously know that petroleum will last forever. In fact, that's the most important facet you didn't even bother to mention. Obviously, Earth's resources will last forever so there's little point in exploring new energy sources or even terraforming other planets . You perplex and vex me to no end, Mr. Binary. To. No. End. Nope let's just stay put on our shitty, unimportant little planet and good things will just magically happen to us because we want them to. It's the American Way, really.
In response to a rep (actually, now, two reps, green that inquired, and red that presumed it was not adjusted), that figure is supposed to have accounted for inflation (i.e. is ostensibly in today's dollars) and seems to be a middle ground - actually, on the high side of the middle ground. Estimates seem to be anywhere from $115-200 billion, inflation adjusted, depending on who you ask and what they used for estimates. And, again, spread out over 40+ years.
Here's an economist writing about the cost/benefits of the Space Shuttle program. I guess we're way off topic by now. Yes NASA landed on the moon! http://mises.org/daily/5454/Was-the-Space-Shuttle-Worth-Itu