Shuttle program scrapped

[753C]

So the space shuttle/low earth orbit program is getting scrapped. Are there any opinions on this or the politics behind it? Do you think it is good? Bad?
I was talking to my Dad the other day about this and at the beginning of the conversation we both seemed to think this was a bad thing, but later in the conversation neither one of us could think of any direct tangible benefit the program has had on our lives. I mean there have been a lot of indirect benefits driven by the technology that was created for the program, but we didn't spend all this money for the last thirty years to learn how to make better golf clubs.... Did we??
I know there must have been something wonderful that came out of this that I am not thinking of. So along with your opinions on the end of the program, please also let me know what we accomplished up there.

 

[beer good]

but later in the conversation neither one of us could think of any direct tangible benefit the program has had on our lives. I mean there have been a lot of indirect benefits driven by the technology that was created for the program, but we didn't spend all this money for the last thirty years to learn how to make better golf clubs.... Did we??

Here's some good articles on the more tangible benefits of the space program:

Space Exploration Benefits

The Benefits of Space Exploration for the Safety of Humans and Ultimately the Survival of Mankind | Academic

Numerous benefits of space exploration - TheHill.com

While they might not be as sexy as learning about the origins of the universe and the solar system and by extention helping us understan how reality itself works, things like GPS, weather satellites, global communications, etc do come in handy for millions - if not billions - of people every day.

‪West Wing Galileo What's Next‬‏ - YouTube

 

[753C]

Well I actually tried to find some and ran across a lot of these results myself. Many of the ideas proposed in those links are certainly beneficial, no argument there.
And I get what the guy is saying in the West Wing clip as well. No arguments that discovery in and of itself is rewarding in many ways, but all of the things he mentioned really were tangibly beneficial in and of themselves.
Fire= obvious.
Exploring our world (without GPS)= more gold,food, oil, land, lumber, foreign people to exploit, etc.

With space travel I suppose GPS systems are nice and satelites provide us with a lot of benefits, and of course all of the myriad technological wonders that have been spin-offs of the space program are great. Maybe I was just hoping we would find adamantium or amazonium or maybe even afraidium on the moon or something. So maybe it's about the journey and all the things that have come along with it that is important. Maybe that is enough in this case.
Oh yeah, and Tang! Everyone loves tang right???

So back to the original question, do you think it was time to scrap this phase and move on to the deep space exploration phase? Have we mined everything important from the low earth orbit deal? Is it time to let the private sector take over while NASA moves on to bigger and more interesting challenges?