Since its creation in 1958, NASA has not only been at the forefront of innovation and discovery for the world, but also an inspiration for young Americans who dream of going to space.
Now, NASA’s budget is the lowest it’s been since 1959.
This lack of funding causes less discoveries and decreases the United States’ ranking in the world of science and technology. The US used to be the world leader in space exploration, but these budget cuts seem to be more frequent every year.
With these discoveries also came new technologies. So many things we use every day are a direct result of NASA missions including firefighter uniforms, cordless tools, water purification, solar power and of course GPS technology.
In July, NASA’s New Horizons space probe did a flyby of Pluto, capturing the first ever high-definition images of the dwarf planet.
The entire mission cost less than the Minnesota Vikings’ football stadium.
Yes, the Vikings, who have never won a Super Bowl in it’s history, apparently have more importance than discovery.
Given that all these great achievements, why would anyone think of cutting NASA’s budget?
It’s probably because NASA also handles all the Earth sciences. Or in other words, they study climate change.
The US spends billions and billions on building or maintaining things to kill people with. It would be more beneficial to not just the planet, but the human race as a whole, to move forward exploring and eventually populate our galaxy.
There is a theoretical scale known as the Kardashev scale, which classifies different types of civilizations according to how they harness energy on a cosmic perspective.
At our current state, we are nowhere near Type I, which is when a civilization has the ability to harness energy from Earth.
As science fiction as this sounds, our technological advances could reach that point if space exploration was made more of a priority.
When NASA had a huge budget in the 1960’s, they developed the technology in just 10 years to put a man on the moon.
Regardless of if the 1960’s Apollo missions were a race to beat the Russians to the moon, when NASA has the funding it needs, it can do amazing things.
If not for the discovery, fund NASA for the economic benefits. Innovation drives the economy and this is proven just by looking at the early stages of the industrial revolution.
Humanity will not survive the next millennium if we don’t come to a point where we stop all this debate and realize that technological innovation is what will propel society into the future.
Give NASA more funding. Humanity needs to move forward.
Opinion editor Anthony Torres is a political science junior and may be reached at [email protected]
Doesn’t take much money when Charles Bolden has stated that his primary mission was to promote better Muslim relations.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/charles-bolden-nasas-fore_n_637854.html
Huffington Post link redirects to 5 year old Fox News article that focuses on a very minor part of a twenty minute interview. Alright…
A few things you may have overlooked though:
1. President Obama charged Charles Bolden to better Muslim relations. It was not his own primary mission.
2. In addition to that, he was charged with reinvigorating interest in STEM fields and international relations overall. That’s a pretty obvious good thing isn’t it?
3. Later in the interview he talks about the importance of international collaboration in bringing nations together. How without Russia, Japan, China, and other nation’s contributions to space exploration that Off-Earth systems like the I.S.S. would have never become what they are today.
My question is how is the mere pursuit of bringing in additional engineering, mathematics, and science knowledge such a bad thing?
It’s arguable that very collaboration single-handedly improved very sour relations with the countries that we so closely work with now.