Hubble in trouble? should we care?

The Shuttle Atlantis launched into the heavens Monday morning. During a ten hour inspection in route to the rendezvous with Hubble, astronauts discovered a 21 inch long line of "chips" along the starboard side of the shuttle(where the wing meets the fuselage). The "chips" are in the heat panels that would protect the craft from the intense heat of re-entry. The Shuttle Endeavor is on stand-by for a rescue mission. The Atlantis is on a mission to upgrade the incredible telescopehttp://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4GPEA_enUS317US317&q=hubble+pictures&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=PAwKSoStDsWPmAfvgonaCw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title check that link out to see the amazing images captured by her. If they succeed in their mission, she will be 90 times more powerful!! The goal is to get a better understanding of dark matter, and of course other potential life-sustaining solar systems(the holy grail of space exploration).
I'm routing for success(and the safety of the astronauts naturally) and am also a huge fan of space etc. But with all of the problems facing our humanity actually on the planet, is it worth it?(it's 1.5 billion simply to get the shuttle off the ground) NASA officials and space geeks alike will say "we need to explore so we can learn more about our planet bla bla bla" well guys if we don't take care of our immense need to destroy ourselves by any means necessary.... space isn't going to matter much. So as much as it pains me to say this, it might be time to look at shutting down the space program and focusing on our planet

Danny..over and out