The money spent on space probes isn't packaged in shrink-wrapped bundles of hundred-dollar bills and launched into space. The funds to build the scientific instruments that allow us to better understand our place in the universe are entirely spent right here on Earth in the form of employment for scientists, secretaries, engineers, accountants, technicians, truck drivers, etc.

At a total cost of $386 million, the Mars Phoenix Lander, which captured and returned the amazing images of snowstorms on Mars, costs exactly what the United States spends in one day on the war in Iraq.

Sanger's ire is misplaced. Far from being a waste, our funding of scientific research and the technologies that extend the horizons of human knowledge is one of the best investments in our future that we as a nation can make.

Seth Jarvis

Salt Lake City