It's odd that you don't have a problem with a millitary budget roughly equivalent to the entire rest of worlds put together, or mind- boggling CEO salaries, or professional sporting incomes?

I can tell you that my class of grade six children in Australia get enormous stimulation out of these projects.

We at MarsNews.com certainly don't feel this way, it's just the first paragraph of the editorial speaking. As Dustin (who added this story) put it, we linked to this story because "we like to understand our enemy."

So of what this article speaks to is in the way certain items are voted on. A school budget due to poor town property and raising cost for education in general means that in order do education for the population of the town and to hold taxes down must mean some very difficult decisions must be made by those in power to do so once a given budget dollars have been voted on by the towns voters. That does not always make these decisions right but we have to live with it due to the economics of the area. As for going hungry there are to many reasons for this occurence but most lead back to poor paying jobs or to the loss of a jobs over extended periods of time. I can only talk of my little corner of the nation with regards to the how and why these things happen. More people must be willing to help those that are truely in need and not just those that are looking for handouts claiming to be of need. I truely hope that those events and conditions will change for the better in your area.

Our friend Liam Tucker is right. Someone give that persons head a shake. She makes it sound like we put a bag full of crisp $100 dollar bills on a rocket and sent it to Mars. All the money spent for building the rovers or space exploration stays here at home and does not go to some Martian banker. Companies/Individual from all over the country got a cut of the total cost for parts and design. Not to mention what projects like MER do to the young minds wanting to study Math and Science and sparking their mind to become explorers. Grrrr

I find it interesting that people still think that education is the domain of the federal government. Every single public shool system is set up to be state funded. The federal government has just been subsidizing and overstepping their bounds. It has unfortunately become our job to educate the ignorant about the benefits of programs like MER.