If you could really guarantee that the money would be spent on something more worthwhile, I'd say, absolutely, scrap the space program, but it never works that way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We need a space program because we need explorers. Its in our souls.
People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
We've got to get rid of the stuff on the space station somehow. So we do have a pretty significant capability to bring back stuff on SpaceX that you might not imagine.
The space program is not only scientific in purpose but also is an expression of man's insistent determination to do the nearly impossible - to explore the unknown, even at great risk.
If leaders in the space program had at its beginning in the 1940s, pointed out the benefits to people on earth rather than emphasizing the search for proof of evolution in space, the program would have saved $100 billion in tax money and achieved greater results.
It's important to bring things back from the Space Station because, unlike somebody living at the house where the garbage truck comes by twice a week, they don't have that in space.
NASA should not be developing its own proprietary version of capabilities it could purchase commercially at much lower cost, especially when we know the agency's bureaucratic tendencies will be to view the commercial versions as competitors to kill.
Having the benefit to our society, not only here in the United States but throughout the world with the amount of invention you get from having a space program, is well worth the risk that an individual like myself has to take by flying in the vehicle.
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.