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Nickle and Diming…

“White House Cuts Hubble Servicing Mission from 2006 Budget Request”

When I saw this headline on my Yahoo News, my reaction was in the vein of relief that tax dollars aren’t being spent on more space crap. As it is, billions of dollars are set aside for NASA related experiments and space flights. As far as I’m concerned, even a million is too much. I just don’t see the point of spending billions of taxpayers dollars on flying around up there to get a $26 million dollar fuzzy snapshot of dirt. I can go in my backyard and take a CLEAR snapshot of dirt and sell it to you for half the price.

The point is that NASA sucks so much money from taxpayers wallets and really has very little to show for it. At least very little that they’ve shown US. I’m sure that the experiements they perform are useful but my feeling is that they could be performed on the earth’s surface for a fraction of the cost. Also, I feel that NASA should be funded by the private sector instead of using tax money. My feeling is that there are plenty of companies out there that could fund NASA on their own, in return they’d be able to put their experiements and people on board to do the work NASA does.

And if you want to fly around trying to get a photo of the surface of Mars, then you need to find a way to fund it without charging the taxpayers for it. Personally it offends me that over $20 million of our tax dollars would be spent to shoot a camera out into space to take a picture. It might be exciting to the researchers and scientists out there, but personally I find very little use for it. Knowing what the surface of Mars looks like does very little to cure Cancer or AIDS. It doesn’t end homelessness or put books in schools.

I just think that until the people take back their government and make the people we vote into office accountable to us, this kind of wasteful spending will continue.

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