We Stopped Dreaming - Neil deGrasse Tyson (NASA)

[pokerfan]

Neil deGrasse Tyson's righteous rant on how Congress is mortgaging the future of America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_F3pw5F_Pc (2:38)

Tyson was on Bill Maher last Friday, and he said everything that needs to be said about plans to slash NASA's budget, including doing away with the James Webb Space Telescope. His phenomenal, astounding rant is one of the greatest pieces of truth-telling you'll hear today:

First of all, let's clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA?

And so when someone says, "We don't have enough money for this space probe," I'm asking, no, it's not that you don't have enough money, it's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.

You remember the 60s and 70s. You didn't have to go more than a week before there's an article in Life magazine, "The Home of Tomorrow," "The City of Tomorrow," "Transportation of Tomorrow". All of that ended in the 1970s. After we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming.

And so I worry that the decision that Congress makes doesn't factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. Tomorrow's gone. 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, and the rest of the world is going to pass us by.

[phantom power]

1. "the $850 billion dollar bailout ... is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA?"

First of all, he had me at "hello."

Second, this one quote is a textbook example of how innumeracy enables the kind of budget demagoguery that has brought us to this place.

[DrDan]

2. we are entering into the next dark age

the focus on quarterly results began in the mid-80's. Corporate interest in R&D declined when CFO's figured out they were a great place to cut costs. Entities like Bell Labs saw budgets slashed. It was sad to watch this happen.

The United States was built on this curiosity, this sense of adventure. Now we will lead the world into delightenment (endarkenment? not sure what the opposite of enlightenment should be).

[Ready4Change]

3. Agree with him 100%

.

[Odin2005]

4. It is a betrayal of our basic humanity.

As Sagan famously said, "We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still".

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. He is so right.