On science, NASA, and America's need for inspiration...

[coldblossom.livejournal.com]

I know not everyone believes NASA should exist, that the government should have a role in space-exploration. I disagree, because for obvious reasons we need a strong presence in space for our own national security (I'm still not sure how we will be maintaining our fleet of spy/communications/commercial satellites without our own means of getting men to Earth orbit), and also I strongly believe that the space programs (summed up as "NASA")  have done incredibly good things for our economy, our scientific progress (remember the term "space age materials?"), our level of education, and our way of life. NASA has also inspired millions to dream, to set goals greater than anything previously dreamed of, and often these goals have actually been accomplished. I found this short video which makes that case, and if someone asked me which would I rather have, NASA or Medicare/Social Security/ObamaCare (whose spending dwarfs everything else in our economy), hands-down I would choose NASA.  Entitlement spending drains the economy--all pain and no gain; NASA has paid out dividends beyond what anyone could have imagined in its relatively short lifespan.

When I was little, in the heyday of the space shuttle era, everyone wanted to be an astronaut. No doubt living within driving distance of the Space Coast contributed, as did having active-duty astronauts visit your school to share their visions (one told me we'd have a moon colony by 2010--he must've not seen all of the budget cuts coming) and that sort of thing is inspiring, it makes kids like me (and adults) believe the fantastical can be reality, and then we grow up and work towards those ends, for our own personal satisfaction and maybe for our country as well, since NASA is a government agency.

I don't think its a coincidence that, in the video when the narrator talks about "absence of ambition" and lack of dreams, the images shown are of Occupy Wall ST and President Obama. OWS are the sort of people that leaders like Obama inspire, and Obama himself has no vision for furthering America's greatness. He's the one who cancelled the Constellation Program to put Americans back on the moon and eventually get us to Mars, and then told NASA to focus on outreach to Muslims (wtf?). Since the world still turns regardless of what the USA is doing, we stand to cede enormous scientific ground to the Chinese and Russians (oh the irony) because of this decision. 

Finally, again there are many who don't believe NASA should exist because that is not the government's role to fund such an organization. Let private companies do it. I don't disagree with the latter idea. In fact, I'm glad to see that SpaceX, Virgin and Google, etc are all taking it upon themselves to fund space exploration, commercialize it even, though even now the government is still subsidizing these ventures to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. Things may (or may not) progress more quickly that way. I was incredibly excited when SpaceX successfully launched a mission to the ISS last month (though I was also puzzled: the technology to accomplish this already exists; why isn't NASA sharing so we can actually progress our technology rather than wasting time waiting for the private companies to "discover" the tech on their own?). I'm also excited that Google is going to fund a venture for asteroid mining (profit can do wonders to get things done). However, while these are all victories for space exploration and science, they're not really victories for the USA. None of these companies will say these things were done for America, and none of them are necessarily restricted from selling their technology or services to our rivals. Imagine if Apollo 11 were funded by Google -- it would be the Google logo up there now instead of the Stars and Stripes. Only NASA can claim these accomplishments as victory for the USA since every single American contributed. That lends to a sense of national vision and pride, and brings us all together in moments of triumph (Apollo 11, the first shuttle launch) and tragedy (Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia) because we're all in it together. If SpaceX blew up on the pad, it would be tragic, but we wouldn't feel the same connection to it. It would be a loss, but hardly a national tragedy. 

Does any of this makes sense? Someone shared this video with me (knowing I'm a space nerd) and I was like, this says in under 3 minutes what I feel about how having a nationally funded space program is invaluable to the United States. My heart breaks a little each time I see footage of the space shuttles being mothballed and I hope that the next POTUS pulls a Kennedy and inspires us to accomplish the impossible (the technology to land on the moon did not exist when Kennedy made his famous speech, yet the USA managed to achieve that goal within 10 years). 

Also, for you gamers out there, feel free to name that background tune. :D