Even the stupidest plan to get to Mars only got a price tag of half-a-trillion (over 30 years).
The same team that gave the sticker-shocking $300-500 billion price tag to the Space Exploration Initiative gave a price tag of about $30-$50 billion to a MarsDirect-style mission. Spread over 10 years, that's about 10% of NASA's budget.
Even if, incredibly, there are no huge cost overruns and the final tally is $30 billion, are you willing to pay extra taxes starting today so the money isn't borrowed from future generations who presumably would like to have their own space missions to enjoy in real time, rather than just read about them in the history as they struggle with high taxes to pay down the debt we ran up for them?
