whoa- back off!! call me a luddite and you will humiliate yourself....
but why do we pay to do these things? It is true that we could send a lot of kids to college with the money spent on the rovers..... hell I once did a breakdown of what we could do for the cost of one stealth bomber.... 900 million can do a lot....

So why are we spending money on probes to mars? I mean so many people could be helped by that money... <in case you were thinking i had a mental snap i am playing the devils advocate>

why do we do these things....? I think most people feel pride seeing pix from mars... it boils down to arrogance- "damn we are smart monkeys!" despite all our differences we all see the importance of exploring...
exploration of space is the only truely pure thing we do.... i think there is no economic return now, but the inspiration is priceless

if we waste money on anything it should be on exploration, but we dont do it enough....

i want to see us devoted to going out there- what i see is that we are mostly interested in war - its depressing