I can't be bothered with a lot of what he writes about, and I certainly don't like his attitude towards his peers, but well-known weblogger Dave Winer manages to hit the nail on the head from time to time - and this is one of those times. "Space travel is more important than the seven people who died and the billions of dollars that were lost. Every time we've gone to space there were benefits that we didn't know about before, that we reaped later. The computer you're using right now is a product of lots of space missions. This is where the moon mission style of development came from. I'm a big believer in it because it produces results. Declare an impossible mission and then achieve it. Then take stock. There's a pretty good chance you invented something important along the way. But you were too busy to notice."