It's exciting and it's also needed. Apart from finding cures for deseases and finding a way to help poorer countries develop, space exploration should be one of humans main priorities. Although it'll be along time, we're not going to beable to live on earth forever, that's a fact. Everybody who has the slightest knowledge of the cosmos understands that our star will take out the whole solar system when it finally collapses. But before that happens humankind will reduce itself back to a tribal state because of nuclear war or social collapse.
So if Humankind is going to keep its legacy going and not have everything that we've learned and achieved and archived over thousands of years just go to complete waste to never be seen ever again by any other presence is the universe, we NEED to find a way of traveling to a habital planet and new solar system. So to me the money is NOT a waste and needed.

Agree with this statement. Now, don't get me wrong, it's exciting we can land in other planets but realistically it's a waste of money. They should be sending robots to terraform the place so it becomes habitable and then send people to colonize.

NASA is lying and we've never been in space! its all been a cover up! .....

but on the serious side, were just going home, humans are originally from Mars. Twilight zone told me so

Whenever planning for anything, the core or base must be solid then engineered (overbuilt), then tested.

Our planet is sound, for the most part, but is changing and most likely somewhat due to humanities technological evolution. This can be fixed but must be done first. Hoping we have time to figure out how to build space colonies or warp ships and then running out of time is not an option. You might as well not even bother at that point. Assuming we can do it before things get to hostile on Earth is over arrogant and a very poor way to plan. Setting up shop on another planet, just to ruin it like this one, and have to leave again, is just plain stupid. We have to figure out how to do things in an environmental friendly way, which can be done.

You could say the species is overbuilt, as there are more than enough brains in the world to fix all of our problems on Earth, and figure out how to get to Mars and beyond. Everyone needs to be fed, housed, and educated first before that can happen. Business and politics needs to change as well for this to work. A tough task indeed.

As for testing however, that's where thing's get really complicated. With our mindset, a race such as ours that's taught to make sure you take care of yourself in a way, that your far ahead of the competition (other people) before you even consider helping them, we will never properly become a space faring species. This is partially a natural way of thinking as well. Changing this mindset will be a very tough and slow process, unless a worldwide effort is made to assure equality across the board. If no one has anything to gain or lose, then we can all do whats best for all of us as a whole. Like I said though, thats going to be tough. The thought of worldwide equality scares people because it seems dull and boring, which it might be as compared to the way things are now, but if the way things are now lead to the downfall of all species, then a little boring is better than nothing. I bet some people may even disagree with that to though.

Space is fun to talk about and imagine, but until those 3 key items are met, its not worth it. What we have now is more than enough to deflect an asteroid, and thats the biggest space threat we need to worry about for a long time. If we keep killing the planet with pollution, or continue to house nuclear weapons (for use against each other, and no, if aliens show up and are hostile, nukes aren't going to solve that problem) then we're not fit to leave anyway. Any other advanced species out in space that we ran into, wouldn't want anything to do with us after the first meeting. They may try to help, but most humans being so arrogant and short sighted, would tell them thanks but no thanks, thats not how we roll, even if its for our own good. The human race has a very very long way to go before going anywhere but here is a good idea.

You have a strange definition of stolen.

Although some Tax is ridiculous, like Gift tax.

"In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it."  - From Wikipedia.  That's the definition I'm using.  

Pretty much everyone consents to tax. The debate is how much tax. We all agree we need the fire department, public schools, police, road works etc.

Yeah I don't pay TV tax, I don't watch any form of broadcast TV everything is on demand so I'm safe from that.

Inheritence tax is bs also.

I do not agree that we need public schools, or public funding of those other things.  Tons of that stuff is already handled privately, so I see no reason not to get the government all the way out of those businesses.  

There are a lot of myths about NASA spending a lot of unnecessary money. To be honest, they never have. Between NASA's founding in 1958 and 2011, NASA had spent a combined total of just over $500 billion, or on average, $9 billion a year. That may sound like a lot until you realize that the Department of Defense spends about $600 billion IN A SINGLE YEAR. That's right, what the Defense Dapartment spent in a single year took NASA 53 years to spend that same amount of money. Even during the height of the Cold War, NASA never had a big budget and their budget now is a just a mere shadow of what it used to be. 

Also, unlike other government expenses, there has actually been a return on the investment in NASA. The American people have made money because of NASA. Also, entire industires have been created because of NASA. One reason you're using a computer today is because they needed a computer small enough to fit in a space ship. That's where the invention of the microprocessor came from. Not too many people were looking to do that back then and had it not been for NASA's interest in computers, we'd probably be half a century behind with our technology. 

So if you want to talk about going broke or fixing other problems down here, how about we pull out of the Middle East? How about we cut the defense budget in half? How about America stops policing the world. Then there's Social Security, which is also costing the tax payer a lot and is in the process of going bankrupt due to horrible government management. Or how about ending the war on drugs, a war that on average costs almost as much in a single year as NASA's current budget and unlike NASA, achieves nothing and makes things worse. In fact, while we're at it, we could also save $2 billion a year by getting rid of the DEA altogether.

So there's so much waste we can get rid of and we could have new roads new bridges, new schools, a better economy AND  our trip to Mars.