Manned space travel is a total waste of money.
Perhaps, but space tourism will likely be the way average humans get into space for the first time.
How about all y'all who want space exploration put your money where your mouth is and seriously think about why it is that we want to continue the NASA space waste, pushing more tax dollars into a centralized space authority? Funding companies eager to develop private space exploration is the best way to make it happen.
http://www.space-frontier.org/COMMSPACE/Manned space travel is a total waste of money. Manned space travel is . . . our only means to fulfill the mission set for us when we were created. We're supposed to be multiplying our talents and ourselves and going forth to fill the universe. It's our job and not doing it would be doing exactly what the unfaithful servant who buried his one talent did.