Thanks all for the comments about Apollo 11 and the space program! I respectfully -- and adamantly -- disagree with those who think NASA a waste of public money. First off, we're talking a relatively puny federal budget of seventeen billion dollars for this fiscal year, which is fairly typical for NASA. Compare this to the vast squander in Iraq, Afghanistan, the so-called War on Drugs, or the 680 billion dollar "defense"* budget, and one has to applaud NASA and its bang for the buck.
The space program provides ways to better understand climate change, has vastly helped improve global telecommunications and continues to boost investment in R & D at universities throughout the USA. The space program for the past fifty years has included R & D investments in every state in the Union. Technological spinoff is evident virtually anywhere one turns, on a daily basis.
These are academic points anyway. NASA and a slew of international space agencies and projects will continue for as long as we exist. It's just a matter of scale and speed at this juncture. For now, no sleep till Mars!
Today's Rune: Movement. *"Defense Department" is an Orwellian, and now almost universal, revamping of the more accurate term, "War Department," truth in language being a casualty of the Cold War. [Photo credit: NASA. Buzz Aldrin poses with US flag on the Moon, July 21, 1969].
6 comments:
I agree it's money well spent. Even just the serious contemplation of space exploration forces a shift in perspective towards the long view for humanity. We have to keep the earth alive, or we won't be around long enough to explore much else of space.
JC, PhD (!)
Agreed. No one fully appreciates what we gain in reaching for the stars.
I say that we need to spend some of that wasted money on wars and other bullshit and clean some of the 100,000 pieces of garbage from space that we have put up there since 1957. We have surrounded the earth in an artificial belt of pollution that shows me we do not belong further out than our current reach.
Clean up the messes her before we go find new places to shit. Does anyone think that maybe by leaving more useless garbage on the moon that maybe it is a sign of what we would do to other further off places.
Yes NASA is forced to be economically wise and they do a fine job of it but let them turn their powers to not just observing the climate of earth but finding a way to aid in fixing it.
That would be the greatest bang for every buck spent by every space mad nation bent on conquest of the so far limitless.
Absolutely. There are some real wastes of dollars in the government but space exploration is NOT one of them.
I prefer no sleep till Brooklyn, but Mars is good too. lol.
Never knew that Nasa did all that stuff. That's awesome.
worth every nickel = but Iraq and ag subsidies -- you decide
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