Space Exploration epitimizes the spirit of humanities insatiable appetite to explore that which is beyond our reach. Explortion of the unknown has lead to new civilaztions, new ways of life, and world unity. We cannot help but to explore new worlds regardless of how far away they are.

Now , the reason why money is not wasted in the space program is becuase all the development that comes out of NASA leads to a direct benefit in our everyday lives. It is only becuase they have become so profficient at what they do, most of the public has written off what they do and standard procedures unworthy much media coverage until something goes wrong. But everyday we use products that were develped for space programs, such at CAT scan machines, hi-res digital photography, mylar survuval blankets, GPS, computer networking , internet access, ect. The list can go on and on. NASA spends the time and money to develope these products for use in space, but usually there are many civilian applications for the same products. Production of these product leads to redevelpoment, sales and distribution - all of whihc leads to more jobs, becuase somebody has to build them, and sell them , and fix them , and repair them.

One last point, we know that russia and china have both put men in space and now even more countries are getting involved. Obviously we have seen the power of Google map ( and that is only at the civilian level) Imagine now, that other powerful countries have satelites to spy on us and can position weapons directly above our country , dont you think it would be a good idea to be abloe to stave that off. If we decided to stop "wasting" money on space programs, we can say goodbye to many new developments that will be out of reach of garage scientist and we can expect to be overwhelmed with visitors in the skies above the US.

As far as starving children are concerned - americas poor people have xboxes and cell phones - starving countries are that way becuase their governements are stealing the millions of dollars of relief that we are already sending them.

Just remeber this , without exploration into theunknown, America would not be here today -- without exploration of space, America will not be here tomorrow

However indirect they might be, the advances would not have come were it not for the space programmes of NASA, as there would have been no technological need. Space exploration gave impetus to projects that have been useful, as well as providing valuable scientific knowledge. For example, the laser-targetting of mirrors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts helps test and understand basic physics, which in turn leads to advances in very earthly things like electronics, hyper-conductivity, etc.

Potential organisms to be found in space (such as on Mars) offer exactly the same value to the scientific community, and perhaps more, as the conditions would be far more extreme than those found on the Earth.