It's obviously a perception of worth, and what we decide is worthwhile. Ajax asked what we would do without money.. well money is obviously just a convienient way to exchange goods without having to walk your 3 cows down the road to trade it for coffee beans. A Human needs too feed themselves and drink water each day to survive, be heathly and reproduce. I'm not suggesting that we all start growing our own food to live, society depends on each other people to survive these days. We have a wide range of skills between us that we can all take advantage of. Obviously ,Wintermute said:Can't we ever have a discussion about space technology without the age old "it's not worth the money" line?;( simple fact of the matter is that the expenditure on space research is a miniscule drop in the ocean compared to expenditure on arms and weaponry, and *that* is your main problem. Space research is neither here nor there: the problems of earth are not cause by NASA, they are caused by religion, by social injustice, by religion, by politics, by religion, by racism and fear, by religion... (you get the idea?) eliminate the space program tomorrow, and give *every penny* to.. well, to what? medicine for the third world? the money would be stolen, and used to buy guns.. for birth control, and health programs? not with "jesus" bush in power you don't.. Personally, I think that mars and going back to the moon will open up another technology race, and benefit all of mankind... whilst the troublesome parts of mankind continue trying to klill each other, or persuade us to folow their imaginary friend. It's the assumption that you *cannot* solve the problems of the world until the human population matures a great deal, and there's no point sitting on our hands waiting for it to happen, or worse, pouring money and resources into a neverending chasm whilst we wait!
Yes the NASA budget is only a small percentage compared to what is allocated to other areas like "Homeland Defense". But it is enormous compared to foreign aid, which was less than 0.5% of the $1.4 trillion budget. "It is last among the industrialised nations in the amount of distribute per capita".
The logistical problems of AID distrubution past corrupt foreign goverments and its malicia is indeed tricky. This is the challenge that maybe all the cleverest people in the world should be concentrating on to try and fix, in my opinion. I don't have solutions or alternatives for some of the crap I rant on about, I find it personally wastfull to squander money on trivial things for £10-£100. Forgetting about the Foreign policy stuff, blowing a couple of £ million would be disgracefull imo, compared to the amount of suffering which could be reduced, the amount of lives which could be dramatically changed right here in the UK and the US. Instead of just a very select few.