"the big science payoff"

why are the world's scientists spending serious moolah on excursions to saturn? wouldn't that cash, although none of it is technically mine, be better spent on, i don't know, maybe medical research? it's just crazy. sending some probe to saturn. what are they hoping to find? i guess my brain is just way too layman to digest the apparently world-altering implications of finding signs of something on saturn. because unless that probe clears the space dust from its lenses and finds a whole population of unmarried brad pitts, i don't see how this particular probe could have any real impact on my life.

brad pitt down on one knee, brandishing a huge, diamond-encrusted saturn ring, proposing interplanetary marriage - that's the kind of data that probe better send back to earth.

because, to be honest, aside from a dying-to-commit brad pitt, nothing is worth traveling 3.5 billion kilometers for.