Many people now do study and work online. Here we are communicting without physically getting in our cars and meeting somewhere. Tell me is it more cost effective for us to communicate over this internet without knowing where each other even are in the world or to arrange some sort of vast transportation system to transport us the same location so we can exchange a few words. We could use web cams and tell me that 90% of any physical meeting between us could not be accomplished in that manner. My goals are much larger than yours. I want to have vast amounts of science knowledge sooner and I want to open up space to large numbers of human beings. You want to spend 100's of billions to send a few individuals on unique missions to feed your ego at tremendous cost.

Yes, many agree with you and many fools believed in the ISS and space shuttle boondoggles. There are many ways to get somewhere, many paths. In my professional career I've seen vast advancement done by return on investment of 2 years cycles. NASA decisions have largely been for the benefit of aerospace companies and not the public will to explore. I firmly believe we don't need to spend 1/2 to 1 billion to get a few humans into orbit. You need to give a much better argument for human presence than a few humans paraded around saying i was there.

The real space exploration will only occur after we have economically viable reasons to be in space. That will happen when we have something like a space elevator to get tonnage into space at some sort of reasonable cost. Trying to do things prematurely only results in wasted dollars that could be better spent on something else that would return on investment.