Earlier this week, NASA outlined a plan for returning manned vehicles to the moon by 2018, forty-six years after the last manned moon landing. The plan, according to NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin and reported by the New York Times, is estimated to cost $104 billion.

According to the Times' article, the money will be used for developing the possibilities of a type of moon base where rockets heading farther into space (Mars, for example) could land and refuel after making the roughly 384,400-km journey from Earth. Once again, the cost of this rings up at $104 billion.

This almost unfathomable, exorbitant amount of money is far too much to throw into the reaches of outer space.

With an American-led war waging on some of the most unforgivable terrain on Earth, a national debt estimated at $7.92 trillion, an entire continent on our planet ravaged by AIDS, more international human rights violations than the opinions section length limits permit and, most recently, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, can the United States really afford to throw $104B into some black hole of combined research and extravagance?

The answer is no.

Surely the space program has its benefits.

Space research has led to some very important technologies.

Satellites miles overhead, for example, transmit communication, entertainment and information almost instantaneously across the expanses of space. These satellites would not be possible without the outrageous amounts of money poured into space research during the Cold War.

Do the pros of space exploration and research really outweigh the cons?

Is it right that while we use the televisions, cell phones and Internet services that yesterday's research brought us, millions of people fall to disease, starvation and natural disasters?

Not in the slightest.

Don't get me wrong. I support most rational research.

I do have a problem, however, when we make a $104 billion deposit into outer space that could have been better spent on Earth.

The cliche is 'space is the final frontier,' not the final cashier.

Outer space is far too intangible and arbitrary to pump money into. We are probably ages away from being able to use outer space like we have used the Earth.

Let's deal with tomorrow's opportunities tomorrow and, likewise, deal with today's problems today.

There are many ways the money could be better spent.

Put the money into AIDS research, into helping the economy or into reducing the national debt.

Give the money to the United Nations, to people across the world who are nearly starving, to the people here in the United States who are living in sports arenas on account of weather calamities.

Spending the money on terrestrial issues would be much wiser than spending it on a space program that's little more than boys and their toys.