NASA's doing just fine with the funding they have. Though I wouldn't mind them getting a bit more. They're great at scientific missions - probes, landers on mars, things like that. They're absolutely HORRIBLE at designing their own launch vehicles. The space shuttle cost fortunes more than originally projected - and could only accomplish a tenth of the work originally projected, if that.
The federal government is, through NASA as an intermediary, giving private companies such as SpaceX small grants (relative to amounts of money sunk into failed programs such as the space shuttle) to develop their own launch vehicles and capsules. This is orders of magnitude more efficient than NASA doing it themselves, and will result in a varied, effective, and useful array of vehicles. Off the top of my head, companies developing their own launch vehicles/capsules include SpaceX, Boeing, ATK/Thiokol, Orbital Sciences or some such, and probably a few others I'm missing.
Virgin Galactic is also a joke. Sure, the flights get to space, but you don't even complete one full orbit. They're suborbital flights with a huge pricetag. Laughable.
As far as life in space, there's a very good chance there is microbial life beneath the surface of mars, as it used to be a warm planet with oceans of water much like earth, and liquid water could still exist under the surface. Liquid water is still occasionally found on the surface.