Millions for Mars or Millions for better research for fuel economy cars?

Yeah. And I along with that, maybe the government should take away everyones cell phones and tax them at a rate consistent with their monthly bill. That money would be better spent feeding, housing, the poor, educating the children and curing disease than on text messaging and conversations.

Often, money spent on research to reach space will result in technology that ultimately benefits us all. The cold war and the space race ended with many satellites - and commercial satellites followed. You you enjoy the Dish Network? How about Direct Tv? Overseas phone calls for pennies whilst I had to pay $4.00 per minute to telephone from Guam back to the U.S. 3 minute minimum. $12.00 minimum charge and I was likely only making about $150.00 per month. Yes, a recruit in those days (mid to later 1960s) started under $100.00 per month! Adjusted for inflation, about half what the recruits start at today.

All of those military radios. Your cell phone is nothing but a two-way radio. Duplex.

Weren't the DoD and a couple of universities involved in the creation of what would become the world-wide web?

Fuel efficient cars have been around for a while. At one point, Japan couldn't sell a lot of cars here as we loved our large cars. Cars (not SUVs) that got 10, 12 miles per gallon. Ah, I remember the 454, the hemis, the 409, and more.

Why is it that we always want someone else to solve our problems? One problem that we do have are accidents caused by large vehicles that make small (fuel-efficient vehicles) difficult to see in parking lots, etc. Folks back into them with their SUVs simply because they can't see them. A large blind area in the back of an SUV (if the following vehicle is small and low to the ground). So I know of a couple of drivers that went back to a larger (and less fuel-efficient) vehicle after they had a couple incidents where someone backed into them because the smaller vehicle couldn't be seen. Whilst everyone wants a fuel-efficient vehicle, often they really want a Hummer that gets 100 MGP and that is not likely at all.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but it seems to me that much money spent in space ends up benefiting us here on earth.

Best regards,

Jim

Millions for mars. Space research is far more intresting than anything on earth. And I'm tired of hearing about fuel prices and all that. People complain and complain. If you hate it that much ride a bike or electric scooter. take a bus, train. Do something to boycott it or don't complain. At least don't complain constantly making it unbareable to talk to you lol.

I didn't realize that was the choice. No matter what we spend money on, somebody can say it should have been spent on something else. There's enough loss of money in the budget *over-runs* in the development of a single weapons system, to fund most of what NASA does.

Both. If you think about our future in the sense of sustainability, we should be pumping billions into searching for a habitable planet, and billions into renewables in order to sustain our stay on this planet.

instead of taking the money from the worthwhile exploration of space, I'd suggest that the stupid pointless and nasty war would be what we should not be throwing our resources into.