why does nasa waiste billions on going to outer space?
362980
because people are basically stupid.
313099
Well, it's literally "rocket science."  Gravity is the worst problem, probably.  It takes a huge amount of rocket fuel to get even a small object into space, let alone people and all the things they have to carry with them. (Imagine how exhausting it would be climbing straight up a 50-mile-high cliff.  Now imagine doing it without anything to hold onto!)  So once you get something up there, there's not much fuel left to keep accelerating.  Every little ounce has to be counted and allowed for in order to get a rocket up into orbit.\n\nBesides, in space everything is relative.  Spaceships and probes actually travel quite fast -- thousands of miles an hour -- but the places we're going to are MILLIONS of miles away.  The Cassini probe to Jupiter traveled nearly two billion miles to get there!\n\nFuel is just one of many problems that have to be dealt with in space travel.  In space, there is NOTHING at all.  No food, no water, no electricity, no heat, no air, no gravity.  Compared to space, walking across the Sahara Desert would be a fun hike.\n\nThere are so many things that you might never think of.  For instance, when the very first astronauts went into space, nobody knew what would happen to their eyes.  It was possible that in zero gravity their eyeballs would lose shape, and they would be blind!  Luckily, that didn't happen, but at the time nobody knew for sure.  Because of that and many other dangers, astronauts are very brave people.
356637
NASA hires a lot of people all over the country. However, most of us work for contractors that work for NASA. There are more contractor jobs and they generally pay better. My wife is a secretary at the Johnson Space Center, but I have always worked for contractors like IBM and Boeing.\n\nRead the links below for more.
526582
Good question!\n\nA there are two groups of people with different points of views. I will try to overview both of them.\n\nFirst, there are the people that are promoting space travel as a tourist approach.  They are basically in it for the money.  A new gimic to get money from people is always around the corner.  There idea is not too weird however, because people looked at each new mode of transportation as a weird idea.  As people used the new mode of transportation from boats, to horse and buggy, to trains, to automobile, and to airplanes; each of these was improved to accomadate and make that particular mode better and safer.  So, although, there are people in it for the money it would have the benefit of making space travel safer and better as it develops.\n\nSecond there are those in the scientific point of view.  They feel it somehow cheapens and degrades their efforts for true space exporation.  They want money from the government and donators to help fund their projects into outer space to discover new things in space and on other planets.\n\nActually, we need both types of ideas and the people that feel that way.  To keep most people interested in space efforts all the attention possible must be give to the effort.  So any thing that brings attention to the efforts of space is usually a good thing!\n\nRemember that creativity comes in many forms and it is the end results that counts.  We need more people to grown up wanting to explore space and going into college after those courses that will help them to become scientists, idealist, pilots, ground personell, and so forth.\n\nSpace tourism may never become an everyday event, but it will sure help get some attention to the space programs of today.
633362
Yes.  But only if the amount of resources we can get continue to increase.  If we can develop robust space industry this will not be a problem.
1147442
Actually for the larger industrialized nations space research and exploration is a relatively small fraction of their overall national budgets, and space research, if used wisely, can help reduce, if not cure, some problems by monitoring crops for diseases or drought, help track weather, animal and fish populations, enivironmental problems, and provide new technologies and materials that can improve healthcare and life in general, and of course there is the knowledge gained about the Universe in which we live. I do agree that there is a great deal of money wasted in the space program (I think the Space Shuttle and International Space Station are make-work money pits that should be closed off), but I think the more germain question is why so many trillions of dollars worldwide are spent on weapons, corporate greed, and subsidizing the lifestyles of the already wealthy. Cutting even just one major weapons purchase program in practically every country around the globe could give each child of those nations a free college education.\n\nI think an argument also has to be made for the simple human need to know and understand what space is and what's in it. Questions like "Where did the Moon come from and what is is made of?" would never have been answered if we hadn't gone there. Sending robotic missions to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and other planets in our solar system give us some hint of what those worlds really are like and fire our imaginations, and sending telescopes, such as the Hubble, up into space have given us a clearer, and often very beautiful picture of what the Cosmos is made up of and how it got here. Theories aren't worth much unless there is data to back them up, and these sorts of instruments help us gather data in ways that human eyes or ground-based equipment never could, and while it's true most of us go through life occupied by the more mundane pursuits of life, but all of us at some time have wondered what this Universe is all about and what our place is in it, and I think the questions being asked here bear that out. Exploring space helps answer some of those questions.\n\nIt isn't legitimate space programs (ie., non-militarized) that are starving the poor; it's the insatiable, contemptible greed of death merchants like Lockheed-Martin and greedhead corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel who want to enslave us that do...\n\nN.
405340
$16.5 billion \n\nSee http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/nasa.html
1180333
All we have to do is survive long enough to expand into space. I think if we did that, it would be hard for anything to stamp out all the pockets of humans around. Especially if we could figure out how to not die as individuals.
1000614
NASA is not an Investment. An Investment is intended  to provide a return to the Investor. NASA does not return anything to the taxpayers that  fund it.\n\nIf all the high tech discoveries, that NASA caused, had been patented and then then royalties paid to NASA would make NASA a good investment. It would be self supporting and not cost us taxpayers anything.\n\nTechnology wise NASA  is a good thing. Investment wise it is lousy. It spends all the money it gets and gets no money in return. That is not an investment.
364030
NASA's 2006 budget is in excess of $16 billion. The agency says it understands its fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer. But by any standard, the space program is wasting many, many millions of dollars. \n\nAnd now, it has its eye on returning to the Moon and a manned mission to Mars. Schatz says that shouldn't be the focus. "Let's just get NASA in shape to do what it's doing now as opposed to expanding its mission into something that's far larger than anything they've done before
365870
An interesting question.  I would say that spacecraft and/or rockets would be the most costly.
157489
1. It's too expensive to set them up in outer space.\n\n2. I'm not sure I want a bunch of bad people at the top of a gravity well. All they have to do is learn how to aim some big rocks at Earth and we'd be in big trouble.
173254
i work for the govt and i am a financial manager for NASA research. we get most of our funds from congressional adds and private researchers. the rest of it is from different institutions needing to know the information for a current or future program.\n\nthanks,\n\nryan\n\nair force research labs.
269628
Did you visit www.nasa.gov?\nThere are billions of constalation, but we can't know for sure cause some are just too far...
87341
Short answer:\n\nUnmanned space exploration is more cost effective, efficient, and lower risk. We can always build new robots, and we can send them over longer distances than people (at least initially).\n\nManned space exploration would have a better chance to capture public support. A human mind in control of a space mission might see or intuit things a computer guided sensor might not, and it might react creatively in an emergency. Ultimately, we'll place more value on manned spaceflight. We've already put robots on Mars, but the first human on Mars will be a much bigger deal. Sending humans through space safely seems to be one of the goals of space exploration.
255065
Hard to believe isn't it?  It's been all downhill since then.  Both the Russian and French space programs seem to be more active and appear to be actually making money, whereas NASA spends billions of $$ and to me at least, has little to show for it.
613382
The cost to go into space is in the millions because that's what it costs to send someone into space.  It's not a big conspiracy or anything, it just costs a lot of money to build a space shuttle, fuel it, get it into space, and keep people alive for a couple days.  Government and private grants cover research missions, but the government isn't going to shell out a couple million dollars for a tourism trip.\n\nThe physical requirements are not unreasonable either.  The lack of gravity puts a huge strain on the human body.  When astronaughts come back, they have decreased muscle tone and heart strenght.  While in space, they have to work out regularly, but still, on Earth your muscles are constantly working against gravity, and when you come back, your muscles aren't ready for it.  If you aren't in exceptional physcial health, the loss of muscle tone could be extremely dangerous, and potentially even fatal.\n\nThe psycological qualifications are also not without reason.  Being in the confined space of a space shuttle with a small number of people for several days puts a huge strain on the human psyche.\n\nThat said, if I had the chance to go into space, I'd do it in a second, no doubt about it.