SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER

Two and half years ago, on my birthday, I happened to turn the TV on in the morning to watch some sports highlights from the night before, and while surfing to TSN I noticed that instead of Saturday morning cartoons most stations were showing the news, more specifically what looked like a comet shooting across the sky and unconfirmed reports that the shuttle had broken up.
The first shuttle mission since Columbia returned to earth safely this morning. I've been doing some thinking lately, which is dangerous but useful, and have been asking questions like 'Can we justify the billions of dollars spent sending an oversized RV into space to visit and stock up an orbiting science cottage when we can't even figure out how to evenly distribute the food and wealth on our own planet?' I'm all for scientific research and discovery and exploration, but at what cost? Here's an interesting article which raises similar questions, and gives a bit of background on the shuttle program. Put your critical thinking skills to use. Apparently it's cheaper and easier to conduct scientific research with unmanned rockets/probes/satellites. However, given the chance, I'd love to orbit the earth for a week in a winged tin can, floating in near-zero gravity, trying to keep all my peas and carrots on my plate. Does this make me a hypocrite? Wouldn't be the first time.