Audacious Visions For Future Spaceflight 176
New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."
The most effective critics. (Score:5, Interesting)
The most effective critics are the ex-fundamental Christians. Michael Shermer for one. They got there because of exposure to folks, the data (or lack there of) and their ideas and thoughts.
And every so often, a light bulb goes off in one of them. Sure there are plenty who doggedly stick to their beliefs regardless of the data, but there are plenty who don't.
Part of the reason there are so many folks who still believe in these things were there is no evidence or let alone the existence conclusive evidence (like evolution) is because it is culturally acceptable for one to say that their beliefs trump data ("I just KNOW in my heart that God placed us here!"). I'm not saying at all that we should point fingers and call them "idiots", "morons" or some other derogatory name, but maybe make it as acceptable as an adult who still believe in Santa Claus or worships Zeus. And the way to do that, is to continually make science, thinking, reason, logic and so on a mainstream value - and that takes exposure, promotion and folks like Tyson to make it "cool".
When I start seeing kids wanting to be astronauts again - instead of ball players and hip-hop stars - then I'll be happy
Start Listening to the Enemy You Mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA started being friendly toward private launch services only when it was apparent it could no longer play the same good-ole-boy game that had for so long presented an anti-competitive barrier to the entry of true freedom to pursue industrially reasonable launch services.
To now listen to "experts" that are designated as such by NASA telling us to pump huge amounts of money into NASA so it can turn SpaceX and others into yet another good-ole-boy network is the moral equivalent of pumping huge amounts of money into creation science.
budget isn't the biggest issue right now (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA needs to make the transition from an executing agency to a support agency, more like NSF and less like the post office.
It's still appropriate to have NASA labs and NASA projects, but the next big advances are going to come through private partnerships and creative investments. NASA's budget is more than 5 times DARPAs budget, for example, but DARPA grabs much more of the public eye these days. The key difference is that program managers (people who control the money) serve 3 year terms in DARPA. There's no time for empire building or lawyering up, which are BIG problems at NASA.