As far as "better ways of spending money", you're always going to be able to claim that. If Ferdinand and Isabella had told Columbus they'd finance his voyage as soon as they took care of Spain's problems, he'd still be sitting at the dock.
"Does it really matter that we know the exact number of asteroids the are in the world?" Well, if the next one we find is on a collision course to wipe out Denver, then yeah, that would be kind of nice to know.
"We still don't know anything conclusive (about the history of the universe) then we did pre NASA." Really? We know the age of the universe much more accurately than we did back then. We know that the best explanation for the moon is a collision between the "proto-earth" and a Mars sized body--some of the moon rocks have helped determine that.
(BTW, I'm pretty sure I know what you're going to say--"But that's not conclusive". No, it's not. Science doesn't work that way. If you want 100% certainty about everything that happened 4-14 billion years ago, you're going to be in for a long wait. You're going to have a long wait if you want 100% certainty about something that happened a month ago. The best that can be done is to say "All the evidence we've found so far points to _this_")
"Honestly, whats the use of the space program?" Probably the greatest use for the space program has happened here on earth. NASA has a page highlighting just _some_ of the spinoffs that have come from the space program at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/ (be sure to look at the "back issues" to find more.
My personal favorite is the "emergency blanket"--those aluminized mylar things you can pack on a camping trip, that are also given to disaster victims to prevent hypothermia.
During the development of the lunar module, the engineers at Grumman had a problem. The lower portion of the LM needed to be really well insulated for it's stay on the moon. However, weight was critical, and any insulation in use at the time was either too heavy, or not effective enough (How critical was the weight? The ascent stage was made of such light metal that when it was pressurized, it swelled like a metal balloon. The windows had been shaved so thin the astronauts were told not to tap on them for fear they'd break--and they were still trying to trim weight).
A Grumman engineer saw a sheet of this aluminized mylar (which had another use), and tested how well it insulated. He discovered that you could use several sheets, and come up with an insulation that was not only lighter than anything that was in use, but actually worked better as well.
Because NASA is legally required to make their discoveries available to industry, people found out about how well the aluminized mylar insulated, and the emergency blanket was developed.
BTW, that "existing use" for aluminized mylar? It was used as Christmas tree tinsel