The day that Ashton Kutcher defines reality for me is the day that civilization can just shut down for good, thank you very much.

The media continues to give voice to these wastes of existence. Maher and his buddies are proof that the left-wing liberals are clueless about science as well as against it. Makes me wonder what Obama is going to do to NASA.

When we're sitting on the ground and the Chinese are dominating the Solar System, be sure to thank a liberal for it.

He is dumber than his character Kelso and that is saying something.

Well, I'm a "left-wing liberal" and I'm well aware of the benefits that NASA brings to the general public. I just think Ashton hasn't got a clue. It has nothing to do with his politics. He's just clueless. He probably knows people who have lost houses in the Souther California wildfires, without realizing that they're all actually benefitting from warning systems, satellite imagery, and firefighting gear made possible by NASA. And the whole stupid "urine into water" comment -- well, that's ignorant, because the water filtering technology already HAS been used in various places on earth to help populations with polluted water supplies.
So he's a nimrod. Plain and simple.

The American people watch idiots on TV and elect fools to Congress. Meanwhile, so-called space advocacy groups declare jihad on one another over which rocket is best to get to which planet, as contractors pump billions of dollars out of the taxpayers pockets to accomplish nothing. Why does it suprise anyone we're going nowhere fast?

Contractors are spending the money allocated to them to do what they are contracted for. The good ones (I put myself in this category) are doing it on time and on budget. If you don't like what NASA is spending money on, that's a different problem.

Guys, space is HARD. There's nothing easy about what we're doing. The euphemism "rocket science" for "something extremely difficult" is very appropriate. I've been in this biz for 10 years, I've got an IQ higher than Einstein, and I love to learn. And I'm CONSTANTLY challenged, to the limits of my ability, to learn new and hard things in order to build satellites which will not only survive, but survive for years. And I know I represent thousands of engineers, managers, business development people, technicians, etc ad nauseum who do the same thing, day in, day out because we love space and appreciate what NASA, SpaceX, Bigelow, Armadillo etc are all trying to accomplish.

We aren't going "nowhere fast". We're going to the moon, and doing it in the timeframe that's funded by congress. We're putting satellites/rovers at Mars, Saturn, Pluto, Mercury, Venus and Earth.

And yep, those 'comedy' guys are idiots.

Don't get me started...

I think that if you did a poll, you would find that it isn't just "left-wing liberals" that feel this way, but a very large percentage of Americans, from a broad spectrum of back-grounds. I believe that the average American puts little value on the space program and feel it is far overpriced. So what do we do?

1. We need to bring more science into the schools, for the children at younger ages. Make the science we present more exciting. Show clips of astronaunts in space and landing on the moon. Do experiments that have some WOW factor. Erupting volcanos, cars that run on potato power, boats that get their thrust from baking soda and work from there to small rockets, that the class can launch in the school yard. Show them, that science can be fun and exciting.

But what can we do now.

2. We need to be realistic, when we put a price on a project, whether it is a probe, lander, rocket or other. We can't have these programs running 2 or 3 times the projected cost. That just gives them opportunities to point the finger and say "waste, mismanagement or inefficiency.

3. We need to concentrate on making the commercial aspect of space more profittable. Look at Europe, they have concentrated on commercial satellite launches and have taken over a large percentage of those launches. We can do the same thing and have started to with the COTS program. Wouldn't it be nice, to see Planetspace, Spacex and Orbital taking back some of the commercial launch market and making a profit on those launches?

Of course, there are other places in the space business for America's commercial companies to make money. Look at Bigelow on their space habitats. But to make that work, NASA will need to fund COTS D, so that our commercial companies can transport passengers and scientists to these habitats.

4. NASA needs to go back to the big science and move away from building their own launch vehicles. NASA just cannot build them as cost effectively as our commercial space companies. NASA needs to do away with cost plus contracts. They only encourage ineffiency. Stimulate the start-up of more new space companies through programs like COTS. Modify COTS requirements, so that more companies can become invovled, not just those owned by billionaries. Encourage competition between those space companies, so that America gets the most bang for the buck.

If we can drastically reduce launch costs, then both the moon and Mars become possible. If Americans feel they are getting their monies worth, they will give NASA and space much more support.

Chester and everyone,
This has nothing to do with "left-wing liberals." First of all, Ashton Kutcher's cluelesness does not stem from his "leftism," whatever that is supposed to mean (by the way, how do you know Kutcher is a left-wing liberal?). He is just ignorant. Secondly, the Republican senator from Florida is every bit as clueless as he is, and she is certainly not a liberal. Let's not turn this into another Dems vs. Reps cockfight, OK? Let's look at facts.
What worries me is that someone like Bill Maher is apparently ignorant of the role that planetary exploration has played in making us aware of things like nuclear winter and global warming. Given his passion for protecting the environment and making this country more aware of ecological problems, you'd think he'd know. My idea, and let me know if you think this is a bad idea, would be to write him a letter and explain why that five-minute rant actually goes against a lot of things he stands for, and why planetary exploration is useful - even necessary. Would you all be willing to do that? We don't have to send him a personal letter; we could address it to him as host of the show, thereby making it more official and less of a personal issue.
Best
Simone

Plain - and to the point, Ashton IS a waste of Space. He's Hollywood Barf. The 'Dude' is totally disconneted from reality. One things for certain, he'd make a great payload to send to Mars. One way. The world wouldn't miss him.

I didn't see the guests arguing the benefits of scientific research. Perhaps you may need to review the tape. It is no surprise that this discussion is biased toward NASA but those interested in the benefits of science should be smart enough to recognize the issue fairly. The guests clearly noted where scientific research and applications could be beneficial. The insults to the character of the guests only reveal the weak character of the posters here. Let's grow up a bit.

The guests were questioning why we send so much money into space when we have issues to deal with here. This is certainly not a new concept/argument but it becomes more relevant in such hard economic times. I don't think Roosevelt invested much in the space program in the last depression. :)

Kutcher is merely a symptom of a MUCH bigger problem of the Hollywood elite: They actually believe that because they have the eyes and the ears of Americans for entertainment, that this automatically makes them qualified spokespeople to "tell us where we need to go, what we need to do, what is important and what is not important" in forging our common future. Others who exhibit this same arrogant tendency are: Martin Sheen, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and yes, even Bill Maher.

Just because I like Mel Gibson's movies does NOT mean that I agree with his ethics or his vision for where America needs to go. I look to actual, demonstated leaders for that inspiration...not people who get paid too much to entertain us.

"The guests were questioning why we send so much money into space when we have issues to deal with here."

No money is actually sent into space. It is all spent on engineers on Earth. There is no reason to single out the space program, when we do a long, long list of other things that aren't buying mosquito nets for Africans.

If we're not buying mosquito nets, we're not gonna be buying them when we have to cut the half-percent of the federal budget that is NASA.

Just going by the transcript at the top - I've got to agree with Maher's comment about the high fives. Unless the point of exploring mars is for eventual colonization there really is no point to it other than giving geolists something to do. I'm very tired of the constant line about potential evidence of potential conditions for potential life a few billion years ago - and that reason is not worth the money. Maybe americans would care more about the same programs if the practical applications were emphasized instead of what makes the geologists excited.

When a spacecraft goes to Mars, you hear about it. And you hear what it cost.

Lots of other spacecraft are launched to do other science (solar physics, Earth observation, etc.) that you hardly hear about. Maybe they don't have cameras, maybe they're not as "cool" as a rover on Mars. Those spacecraft don't take the kind of "heat" that a mission to Mars takes.

Ashton Kutcher shoots at Mars because Mars has been visible, and the costs have been visible. The Shuttle and ISS, frankly, are much less visible to the public and so are their costs. Same for the non-Mars, non-planetary spacecraft. And, no one shoots at Hubble (well, after the optics were fixed 15 yrs ago).

The comment comes in part from the visibility of the Mars missions, and in part from ignorance of how the US Govt spends the rest of our tax dollars. When a mission to Mars is launched, the reporters tell you how much it cost. They might even--like NASAWatch, gripe about how much over-budget the mission was. But, I never see reports on the news about how much money was paid out by Medicare last month, and I rarely hear what Iraq costs, nor do I hear whether the US is actually doing anything about Darfur (are we? what does it cost?).

As for space exploration: Imagine a world where we have fixed all our problems. Everyone has a home. Everyone has enough food. Great medical care and all our diseases easily cured. What for? So we can sit around and watch more Ashton Kuthcer movies? Space Exploration is about the "what for". It is one of the cool things that make being human worthwhile -- what makes us human is, in fact, our desire to see what is over the next hill. We are curious, and we are going to need the living space. Fix all those other problems (homes, food, health), make war go away, and we're all just going to be sitting around playing video games or something unless we have more inspiring things to do with our newfound freedom from all these problems we'd like to see fixed. Some people will find ways to fix the problems, some people will entertain the masses (Mr. Kutcher), and the rest of us will go to the stars.

And, Mein Gott! Imagine! The US Govt coughed up $700 billion to *start*! fixing the economy, practically overnight. For $700 billion, you could have people walking on the moons of Saturn in under a decade. It's not like NASA eats alot of our tax dollars, people.

Given Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's ignorance of the purpose of the converting urine into water "experiment", it is a pity that there is no way of converting the crap she speaks into wisdom.

As for the idiot Kutcher, I have never had any desire to watch any of his films. He makes me think that the "Spirit of Adventure" should have been suppressed before America was discovered by Europeans. Then perhaps, when the non-American world went to the Moon, it would not have emasculated its space exploration programme so soon afterwards and we would already be at Mars and beyond.

Don't the rest of you Americans feel embarrassed that people like Ros-Lehtinen and Kutcher make America seem like a land of congenitally ignorant morons to the rest of the world?

Chester: Regarding your comment "When we're sitting on the ground and the Chinese are dominating the Solar System, be sure to thank a liberal for it."

I don't think any generalization can be made about conservatives or liberals being for or against space. Why add fuel to the fire? God, how many times have us space enthusiasts have had to endure the "my kid's school has a leaky room... we should cut the space program" argument. It has nothing to with political ideology.

Unfortunately for every Tom Hanks, there are 100 Ashton Kutchers using their celebrity status pulpit to spout ignorant nonsense on things they know nothing or little about. The fact that we have free speech (mostly) means we have to tolerate all the ignorance and bile to occasionally get little nuggets of truth and enlightenment. Mr Kutcher is merely giving us another example of "Sturgeon's Law" (Look it up)-- That says either "90 percent of everything is crap" or "NOTHING is always absolutely so". Sigh... :(

Oh man what a perfect opening sequence for a movie called Revenge of Martian Robots Gone Rogue. Cut to a conference room at JPL where an engineer is presenting the closeout plan for turning off the rovers. He's pitching the upload of a sentience program that will allow the little buggers to survive without any contact. The poohbahs around the table look it over and say wtf and give the go ahead. The engineer is a little mischievous and as a joke puts in prime directive that Aston Kutcher must go to Mars. The rest of the movie has the rovers getting in touch with the rest of the Martian on the ground and in orbit and chasing him from Earth all the way to Valles Marineris...

"Kutcher: We send things to Mars. But there are thousands of children that are sold into the sex slave trade every single day. But we send stuff to Mars instead of solving that problem. There's Africa where people are dying of Malaria. There's a quantifiable solution to the problem - and yet we send stuff to Mars - instead of getting bed nets for these people."

Yet another clueless chump (a Hollywood actor, nonetheless) who uses the whole "Will someone PLEASE think of the children???" argument to criticize the space program. Go figure.

And Bill Maher is a douche. Has always been one since his Politically Incorrect show got cancelled because of his moronic comments after September 11.

When I was in junior high and high school, I was an avid watcher of Dennis Miller's live HBO show. The first time his trademark rant ever nearly made me change the channel, though, was his tirade against space exploration in July of 1998.

Fortunately, though, Tom Hanks was his guest that night. The first thing Hanks did was drop a ream of printouts of every NASA spinoff in the history of the space program on Miller's table, before proceeding to tear the night's rant apart.

The public tends to have a vastly inflated perception of how much money NASA gets, so I can't say that I'm surprised the face of "Dude, Where's My Car?" clearly has no idea.

Well I guess fortunately that was the last show of the season. Had always been mildly entertained by Maher's guest panel and somewhat in agreement with some of his viewpoints. This time however I move towards the opinion that he is a blathering idiot. I thought liberals were supposed to be open-minded? Kutcher I could care less about, and the woman from Florida should've been neutral about the subject at worst. Although perhaps not part of her constituency, a good number of her fellow Floridians depend upon the space program for employment.

I'd love to know how NASA's tiny percent of the federal budget would make the big difference for [insert genuinely destitute and desperate population here]. I really would. And I'd like to believe folks are motivated by serious concern when they go down this path, but it looks like they just continue to take easy shots at things they do not understand.

I think this data is generally still applicable, and it certainly give some historic perspective on why pillaging NASA's budget won't solve the problems people like Kutcher are so concerned about.

The thing that bugs me is that the US is currently devoting more money to Africa than it has in all previous administrations (as it should). Granted, it's still not enough to fix all the problems, but it has to be helping.

The US is not doing more in the world, not for lack of money, but rather lack of political will and effective organization and leadership. With strong will and leadership, the US can find the money to do practically anything. And if money needs to be found, NASA is hardly the fat cash cow to be skimmed.

The US is great because it does great things of all kinds - we help, we defend, we entertain, we innovate, we explore. The money we devote to NASA is a small sum for what it gives in return. And we can, and should, do equal justice as a nation to help the needy worldwide, and all the other great things we do. Do it all.

Apollo will remain one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Images from Mars still capture the imaginations of millions of people around the world, and the discovery of life elsewhere would be groundbreaking. The value of discovery can't be measured in dollars, and NASA should not be measured by that yardstick alone. We need to know why things work, and where we came from. Removing our fundamental quest for discovery would be tragic, not for individuals, but for the human race.

****** Stop Making Movie Stars Rich ******

We should tax movie star salaries at 95% and keep doing that until malaria and child starvation and child prostitution are ended. I mean really ...

****** Stop Making Movie Stars Rich ******

Dude, Where's my brain?

I did a report in college a few years ago, when NASA's budget was $16.5 billion. I made a comparison between NASA's budget and just ONE small portion of the MOUNTAINOUS entitlement programs we run in this country. We spent $33.9 billion on just the food stamp part of welfare! NASA gets an awful big bang for it's buck if you ask me!
I think the children here are in good shape especially once the new president and congress gets going. I HOPE they have the AUDACITY to CHANGE things for the better!
Maybe Ashton and Demi could spend a few million on some mosquito nets and send them over to Africa, they could get a lot of press coverage and maybe make a movie about it to recoup their losses buying those nets...

I see lots of lamenting how clueless these starlets are about space and non-industry talking heads in general, and blame is placed squarely at their shoulders.
IMHO thats bollocks. Space heads ( myself included ) are doing very little to promote their cause, whatever it is, in a simple coherent language and simple rationale that actually holds water.
( and please, do skip the comedy about spinoffs and money not actually being sent into space, you are insulting _anyones_ intelligence )

Look, you cant change the way world works, clueless starlets WILL talk on Maher's, thing you can do is try to make rationale voices heard louder. If your case is coherent and makes sense, eventually people will take notice.

Wanna get back Kutcher ? Get on Maher's, tell us why we ought to send stuff to Mars so nobody will laugh and why drinking distilled urine in space is so important. Once you win the audience, you are free to make fun of Kutcher as well.

how many mosquito nets would the $13,000,000 budget of "Dude where's my car" have purchased?

Money is not wasted in space - it's spent here on Earth and has very measurable benefits (like weather prediction and land-use mapping). Unlike for instance, the money spent on Hollywood.

Chester wrote:

be sure to thank a liberal for it.

I think a lot of it has to do with the perception that any interest in science is cold and nerdish and therefore makes you less attractive to women. I suppose Maher and Kutcher feel the need to reassure their audience that they measure up in that respect.

It's an old argument that is false, space spending vs poverty. As if the money spent on space would go to poor people rather than dissappear into the bureacracy. It's shocking that the same people mocking Sarah Palin's ignorance on general subjects would have such a distain for the pursuit of knowledge benefitting all of humanity.

It seems ironic for people to believe in global warming but not in nasa research.

I think you guys don't get it. Ashton Kutcher, Bill Maher and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) think Mars and the Space Station are a waste of money because they don't see any connection between them and the issues in their lives. They have a point.

While stopping the sex trade and stopping malaria are problems which will require much bigger solutions and more money than the NASA budget and may not be solvable at all with money and work.

It brings up the point of what has NASA done for the American Public lately? In this time of economic collapse NASA better come up with a answer quick or start programs which adress current issues or they will be subject to Massive cuts.

NASA should be pursuing energy from space that way they could adress the energy crisis, the climate change crisis and the economic crisis all at the same time.

Less than one percent of the global GNP, as I understand it, it spent on space exploration. This isn't taking resources away from feeding the hungry. In fact, the technology developed from space technology has done much to help people survive. Think about the benefits to the people in the third world such as weather satellites and even the "urine to water". Exploring Venus helped provide evidence for global warming.

But, "space luddites" like Kutcher just doesn't put that into his head. If you want to talk about wasting resources better spent elsware, look at the extravagant way the rich people like Kutcher live.

Think of all the planetary resources squandered on limos, mansions and jet setting. Even the most costly space program is more beneficial to mankind than all the money spent on mindless self-indulgence.