Nations with the debt load we have have no business fooling with frivolities like manned space exploration. If our economy is so un-productive and our government so bloated that we're looking at trillion dollar deficits, forget it.
Manned space exploration is for nations with productive economies, positive balance-of-trade numbers, and so forth -- not nations on the fast track to Third World status. At the rate we're going, India will land on the moon before we will.
And it's our own fault.
“Nations with the debt load we have have no business fooling with frivolities like manned space exploration”
Nations unwilling to maintian a technology base will never be able to pay down that debt load.