Thank you for explaining clearly and thoroughly what I have been trying to get across in many HN comments here. Putting a Man on Mars promises to be the biggest

Thank you for explaining clearly and thoroughly what I have been trying to get across in many HN comments here. Putting a Man on Mars promises to be the biggest non-military waste of tax money. The problem is that it is a very well marketed waste of tax money. It came with its own hollywood movie and a very effective guerilla marketing campaign. When I see those "cool" people wearing NASA shirts in bars, it makes me sick ... it is as if they want to steal money from me. And I actually thought NASA was pretty cool back when they were doing mostly robotic missions that had a lot of bang for the buck. But back then of course there wasn't a marketing campaign to make NASA cool, nobody was wearing a NASA shirt in a bar, and NASA got constantly criticized even for doing its cost effective robotic missions. Now that they are on the verge of a really massive boondogle, all of a sudden everyone is a NASA fan.