Why do the government spend so much money on things like space travel...?

Easy one. What we have learned about our universe and the very planet we live on is so great, the benefits it has given us cannot easily be calculated. The huge technological advances in science due to space travel has led to incredible advances in technology which increases the quality of our everyday lives. It has had a huge impact on the education of our nation as well as the economy. The commercial space travel you spoke of will likely become a mive industry in the near future which will provide more jobs and more research and development for our country. It's easy to look at the dollars spent on space and think it's wasted if you ignore the mive amount of benefits we're getting for that money. Right now our government is wasting BILLIONS of dollars of our tax money on "stimulus" spending and we're getting nothing in return for it except- if they had their way, HIGHER taxes. THAT is a shame and outrage.