Because we can

One of my favorite anecdotes from WWII (if there can be such a thing) involves an American cargo plane being shot down in Germany. The incident went roughly like this:

After seeing an American cargo plane being shot down, a German platoon leader orders his men to inspect the wreckage and salvage anything that could be of use to them in battle.

After inspecting the crash site, a rather perplexed soldier approaches his captain and says 'Sir, there wasn't much of use in the plane. Just a bunch of cakes and cookies...'

Upon hearing this news, the Captain is devastated and visibly shaken. Not quite understanding what could be so upsetting about a bunch of cakes and cookies, the young soldier asks his captain why he's so rattled by the discovery.

The captain composes himself, looks the soldier in the eye, and says in a dazed voice 'Don't you see? We can never hope to win a war against a people who can afford to send cakes and cookies to their soldiers on the front lines...'

This little anecdote, I believe, summarizes America in general. There is no question that the United States is the wealthiest country in the history of civilization. So much so, that even in times of trial and sacrifice, we're able to still enjoy luxuries many nations don't have during their best days.

Recently there's been a great deal of discussion about our space program, whether it's worth the money we spend on it, whether the money spent on going to space would better be spent elsewhere, etc.

To me, the answer of whether the program is worth the money we spend on it is a resounding yes. It's a testament to our progress as a nation that we're the only country to put people on the moon, and remote controlled robots on Mars. When I'm feeling particularly philosophical, I like to look at the moon and have my mind blown at the thought that a human being, much less an American, has not only explored that place, but safely returned home to tell about it.

There's a friend of my family who's actually a pretty well accomplished amateur astronomer, and he'll occasionally bring his telescope to our house (as we live in the middle of no where, away from significant light pollution) and we'll spend the night looking at various galaxies, stars, planets, etc.

Not long after the rovers landed on Mars, he brought his telescope down, and we took a look at the Red Planet. And for me, to think that on that little speck in the middle of the eye piece, there were two American robots being controlled from Earth, taking pictures and sending them back to us -- all from millions of miles away -- was absolutely mind-boggling.

There's a certain sense of pride in knowing that humanity, and more specifically Americans, have had the dreams, the ambition, and of course the ability to accomplish such amazing feats.

Could we be spending NASA's budget on other things? Certainly. But what? I would argue that the funds already exist for any sort of project the government could want to do, it's just a matter of spending it efficiently and effectively, which is always the achilles heel of government.

At the peak of the space race, when NASA was a source of innovation, pride, and prestige in America, our space budget was around 3-4% of our national budget. Today it's less than 1%. So in reality, we could actually stand to increase space funding, even triple it.

Maybe it's arrogant, but when people ask why we spend so much money on space exploration, the answer is very similar to the reason we sent cakes and cookies to our soldiers on the front lines of WWII -- because we can.