Andromeda Initiatives Purpose - Why the hate?

I also had an idea that one of the rich and influential humans involved in the Ai was Jonah Ashland, the CEO of Eldfell Ashland Energy. The lore description of EAE makes them perfect candidates for having supported a project such as the Andromeda Initiative

WIKI
In 2137, the Ashland Energy Corporation successfully extracted helium-3 from Saturn's atmosphere, beginning a new era of fusion research. On the wave of this success, they merged with Eldfell Construction to vertically integrate the two companies' strengths. Ashland would recover the raw materials for energy production, and Eldfell would build power plants, refineries, and pipelines on nearby worlds to distribute Ashland's products to the consumer. Eldfell-Ashland Energy was born.

As EAE's reach extended, they absorbed companies to create a "cradle-to-grave corporate experience" for their employees. Today, subsidiaries such as Second Star Living recruit colonists to staff EAE facilities, and the education group Excelsior provides job-related education opportunities to provide EAE stations with a qualified incoming workforce. Water, power, food, shipping -- EAE provides them all. If EAE wants to put a colony on a garden world, they are able to do so and keep 90% of services performed completely in-house, creating consumers out of its own employees. Its primary revenue stream, however, continues to come from mining base elements like hydrogen, helium-3, and eezo and trading in their futures.

Yes, but it also is the most likely location of the NEAREST planet capable of sustaining human life... now guess what would be driving reason for us to there.

Yes, but that's it... it's there.

*sigh* Ok ok... I give up. Humans would be that stupid, I guess...

Basically the AI is 100,000 space hispters going "The Milky Way is too mainstream, man"

...and they even bring slam poetry with them.

The BioWare mindset in action...

They have people to explore the milky way. Besides, once we get to Alpha/proxima it's not like we're gonna stop expanding. This isn't about costs or exploring the milky way. The Andromeda Initiative is privately funded. Like I said, there is no solid good reason not to go. Intergalactic travel. Something that as far as we know hasn't been attempted. It's an incredible feat. There are civilian corporations like mars one funding missions to get to the red planet. It's not like we're taking the whole milky way. 

Yea, almost as funny as people that feel the need to point that out...

How much did the US government spend on their space program to go to the moon? what did the moon offer in returns?

EXPLORATION

this is a possibility. maybe they DID believe Shepard (behind closed doors) and decided to send out colonists to escape the Reapers. I said in another post that we may run into other races (like some Protheans) that may have done the same thing. the natural instinct is fight or flight and many may have chosen to leave.

I agree.  It's not like the premise is that the ONLY exploration being done anywhere is to Andromeda.  It's safe to assume that there are probably several other ventures of varying sizes constantly continuing to explore various sectors of the Milky Way... they just are not the subject of this particular Mass Effect story.  The group that decided to go to Andromeda is the subject of this story. 

People keep citing the costs... but for a whole galaxy of 60 billion people (and that's just what's listed in the codex) and the amount of economic activity generated by that sort of population and a galaxy full of known planets with resources to exploit, the cost of building 4 arks and one base ship to house, in total 100,000 people isn't all that big... nor is a venture that size likely to attract the attention of the entire galaxy.

Shepard's crucible (a Prothean weapon of mass destruction) didn't even initially attract the attention of the council races he was trying to enlist to support it.  Yet, they were able to, quite easily, build it in a matter of a few weeks in the middle of a war (when tons of resources are going into just fighting various battles around the galalxy).  They were also able to build it right at Arcturus... and neither the Reapers nor Cerberus every found out it's location.