Rocketplane and the Oklahoma Tax Break

Hmm. The irony of any such hypothetical conversation is that the Medicare budget alone in 2004 was nearly TWENTY (20) TIMES the size of NASA's. If you count in Social Security and Medicaid and other related programs, our great and benevolent nation has this year spent over one trillion dollars on those citizens in their golden years and/or otherwise needing medical and substantive income assistance.

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0 (see table 9)

Compare that to the ~$15 billion spent on NASA and then decide for yourself whether anyone complaining about NASA's budget is sufficiently informed to be actually debating the topic. Had the good doctor in Pete's morality play been accompanied by a thousand of his closest associates, they would have been no more able to convince the antagonists in this story than he by himself was.

If I were one of those people in line and you replied this way, I would take it as meaning, "please die so that I can take the money now keeping you alive and use it for heavy lift."