Sorry, but I agree.... Buckdodgers, you need to get yourself educated.... The world isn't laughing at us (not anymore anyways, but they were when Clinton was president). As for taxpayers money, NASA gets probly the least money from the government of any organization, including those programs to study cow farts.
In regards to our brave astronauts, I'm glad NASA decided to hold off another day to give the proper conditions needed for a safe shuttle liftoff. If you say it costs taxpayers $500k a day for the shuttle being on launchpad, then you're saying it's not worth that $500k for the lives of those brave astronauts to try and get us back to work at reaching into space so our civilization isn't doomed to die on this planet within a couple months of any given moment?
If an asteroid as small as a mile across is found to be heading towards this planet, there is currently nothing we can do to stop it from wiping us out. Odds are that we'd have at most a month or two to prepare for it, and we have no firm plan of action to avoid destruction. I say NASA needs more money and people like you need to wake up.
I pray the launch goes as planned tomorrow to start getting us back on track to our studies of space, and hope our space program can get the funding it needs to bring our species to colonizing somewhere else besides besides earth, because right now we are doomed as a race.