Are the Costs of Manned NASA Space Missions Worth It?

As a child growing up in the 80's, I grew up under the impression that our Space Program was far more advanced than it actually is, and that we could probably have a space station on the moon by this time and age. Unfortunately, as I found out while I was writing this opinion piece, NASA's budget is equal to about 1% of the Governments expenditures whereas the Defense Budget stands at roughly 25% of the US Budget (and 47% of the worlds).

Primarily, I support the idea of using manned missions into space for various reasons. For one, the opportunities involved in manned space missions far outweigh the gigantic overall costs that manned missions are responsible for. NASA's budget is also far too small for our country to spend time worrying about whether or not manned missions are too costly, and to be completely honest I think it is ridiculous to get rid of manned space missions because it would destroy many people's dreams.

Last but not least, I will cover the success rates of manned versus unmanned missions and talk about why manned is better as far as success rates go. The only upsides I can possible see in unmanned missions are that less people will die, and we will have more missions to fly.

The opportunities we have with manned space missions are so huge right now. As of now we can do research on what effect space has on food, people, and animals from Earth, and we can man a space station so that every thing doesn't have to go straight back to earth and we might have time to study the moon rocks and comet dust we happen to collect.

If we use robots, we have much higher maintenance costs than we would just using the decompression rooms I think people need to use when they come back from space. An additional positive when it comes to human flight is that private corporations are now offering people spaces on the shuttle for 20 million dollars and if that becomes popular with the upper classes, 16 people showing an interest and signing up could pay for the flight.