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I admit to be genuinely torn by this.
Being that the private man spaced flight stuff is picking up, I can envision that manned space flight doesn't stop. I suppose I view this as something akin to the public education system....not constitutionally mandated in the least, but everyone agrees that it is better that we have it.
How many thousands of inventions and discoveries came from the push to put men on the moon, or even into orbit? I couldn't even begin to quantify them.
This will undoubtedly lead to tens of thousands of lost jobs (some reports says hundreds of thousands), so it seems strange to me that this is cut leading to job loss, but Obama wants 100 billion for job programs. Why not keep those people employed where they are? Have our scientists and engineers laid off, but pay for them to be retrained as a burger flipper (hyperbole intended).
We encourage kids through scholarships and grants and whatever to learn math and science and go to university to pursue such fields, but then cut what the government spends on those things.
Innovation will still happen, and I hope that private funding is big enough to make significant scientific advancements. I wonder, though, if those who make investments and expect a return on them will then be treated as pharmaceutical companies when trying to make profits off of their investment in research.
How would the world be different if the Soviets had landed on the moon first? Maybe not much. I don't really know. There is certainly an issue of national pride involved for me. Some things have to be cut, certainly (and the so called spending freeze is laughable, but that's a different subject), and whatever is cut will have the detractors en masse making their objections known.
In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, though, I would have to figure that what has been spent on space exploration, specifically manned space flight, would weigh heavily on the benefit side.
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