I sincerely believe that if NASA offered lots more prizes, our debt would vanish. Think of all the wealth to be generated through, for example, asteroid mining that can't occur yet due to a lack of enabling prizes. Tax revenues on such activities could be substantial. More significantly still, the better we do in space, the more our youth will be inspired to fall in love with math and science. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were inspired by the Apollo missions and think of how much they've contributed to economic growth. But as Ben Franklin said, the people have the govt. they deserve. It's a constant struggle to keep government from expensively growing even more beyond the consent of the governed.