But isn't this exactly what government is great at. Shouldering HUGE projects that no private industry in its right mind would spend money on... Ultimatly to progress science or humanity in general.

Your argument appears to be hinged on the notion that revisiting the Moon represents "progress". It looks more like "regress" to me: boldly re-solving a technological problem that was solved in 1969 and was already considered boring by the time I was two years old.

Of course, Mars is a lot farther away. If we adopt the principle that distance equals progress, going to Mars would yield approximately 675 times as much progress as a visit to the Moon. But I have a counter-proposal. I realize that humanity has already made a round-the-world trip in a balloon. Now I think we should reorganize NASA around the next great challenge: flying a balloon around the world 675 times. It's never been done before. Imagine all the empty air that humanity could see, over and over again, during the three-year mission! And unlike the Mars mission, which will -- barring dramatic accidents -- yield nothing but some digital video of astronauts wandering around on a really big, airless, dusty, red field, at the end of the balloon trip the aeronauts can land in Paris! The bread will taste much better! The air will be much more breatheable!

Now, I constantly hear people saying one or both of two things:

1. NASA shouldn't be shooting for 675 consecutive flights around the world because it's a complete f*cking waste of time.
2. NASA should take a lesson from private industry on how to get to Paris cheap.

But, after all, if humanity had held back and waited for technology to progress, we would still be stuck in Europe, and we wouldn't even need to fly to Paris, because we would be stuck there. Oh, hell, I've lost my train of thought. Can't you just take it on faith that I'm a genius and give me the money?