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You may have added /sarc but I have no problem with it whatsoever. If there are advances to be made at it and it is profitable to do so, then private industry will take it over. In fact I would hope they do so. Either way, shut down federal funding of it.

I understand your position, but being somewhat of a pessimist, I feel a compulsion to get all our eggs out of this one single basket as quickly as possible. Therefore, I lean towards supporting efforts that would facilitate colonization of other worlds - and these would not necessarily be seen as profitable until the mid-to-distant future, unless an asteroid was hanging directly over our heads.

However, truth be told, I think a detailed risk analysis would find that studying the terraforming of Mars might have more immediate benefits than finding an Earth-like planet in a remote star system. The latter gives us important data on the broader distribution of habitable worlds - but the former gives us a quicker foothold to drive the entire process of exploration. I would fund both - but make their proportions relative to their cost/benefit. Besides, we humans are more contemplative when looking up at the sky with a full belly (literally and metaphorically speaking...)