Here's what happened; in the 1960's, we were at war with the Soviet union, cold war and a little bit of hot, war in Southeast Asia. SO, we fear them because they put up Sputnik, which by the way people forget, was an emptied out casing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Sputnik itself means fellow traveler so it's ll peaceful but it was a ballistic missile head, without explosive, and that was a signal in America and we freaked in America ! NASA got founded on the fear factor of Sputnik. SO then we go to the moon on the fear that Russia will control the high ground. Then we go to the moon, space enthusiast say "OH! We're on the moon by '69, we'll be on mars in another 10 years. They completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place. We were at war. Once we saw that Russia was not ready to land on the moon we stopped going to the moon. That should not surprise anybody looking back on it.
Meanwhile however, that entire era galvanised the nation, forget the war, it galvanized us all to dream for tomatoes to think about the homes of tomorrow, the cities of tomorrow, the food of tomorrow, everything was future world, future land the worlds fair, all of this was focused on enabling people to make tomorrow come. That was a cultural mindset that the space program brought upon us and we reaped the benefits of economic growth because you had people wanting to become scientists and engineers who are the people who enable tomorrow and to exist today. And even if you are not a scientist or technologist you will value that activity and that in the 21st century are the foundations of tomorrows economy's and without it we might as well slide back to the cave because that's right where we're headed right now, broke.
I'm tired of saying this but I have to say it again! The NASA budget is 4/10's of one penny on a tax dollar. If I held up a tax dollar and I cut horizontally into it 4/10's of 1% of its width, it doesn't even get you into the ink! SO I WILL NOT ACCEPT A STATEMENT THAT SAYS "WE CAN"T AFFORD IT!"
Do you realise that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when somebody says we don't have enough money for the space program I'm asking its not that you don't have enough money , its that the distribution of money your spending is warped, in some way that your removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow, the home of tomorrow, the city of tomorrow, the transportation of tomorrow, all that ended in the 1970's after we stopped going to the moon, it all ended, we stopped dreaming. SO, I worry that the decisions that congress make doesn't factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. They're playing for the quarterly report, they're playing for the next election cycle and that is mortgaging the actual future of this nation, tomorrows gone.
If you double NASA's budget up from half a penny on a dollar, make it a penny, go ahead make it a penny, go ahead be bold, that is enough to go to Mars, soon with people, and go back to the moon and on to asteroids. NASA as best as I can judge is a force of nature like none other and so what worries me is that if you take away the manned program, a program which if you advance frontiers, a program which heroes are made. There's a force operating on the educational pipeline that will stimulate the formation of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technologists. You birth these people in to society, they're the ones that make tomorrow come.
A half a penny. That buys the space station the space shuttles, all the NASA centers, the rovers, the Hubble Telescope, all the astronauts, all of that, nobodies dreaming about tomorrow anymore. The most powerful agency of the dreams on a nation is currently underfunded to do what it needs to be doing. And that's making dreams come true. How much would you pay....for the universe?
