After all of these comments I just wanted to put my position in perspective.

I don't think the space program is anywhere close to the worst thing the government does and I'm not going to lose sleep over these new missions. I think of it as being in a similar category as first-class mail delivery. I think it's a good and useful thing, but I think it would be better handled by the private sector.

I agree with the sentiments of this post and am also very enthusiastic about the continued exploration and development of space. My only reason for commenting was that I think that the funding is not merely "morally questionable" but is actually morally wrong. It's far from the worst thing that could happen, but that doesn't make its moral status ambiguous. I think it's important to be clear about this if we want things to evolve in a direction of improvement (as I am optimistic they will).

I strongly disagree with Rich's opinion that "we have governments to do those things that markets don't do well but which some large subset of us can agree are good and which we'd like to see happen." I think this is the point of view that I'd like to see challenged whenever it's brought up as an uncontroversial truth. If a large enough subset of us think something is worthy, then we should have no problem doing it voluntarily. The only advantage of using the government is to coerce those who disagree with the majority to pay for things anyway. This is almost always wrong, and I'm confident it's wrong with respect to the space program.

Gil