An idea that lives on…

Posted By: Neil

 
I have always been a fan of the Kennedy brothers (not so much Ted). One of the lofiest ideas that President Kennedy had won me over with was the goal of bringing space exploration to the realm of possibility. On September 12th, 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke in Houston, Texas about the need for mankind to stretch out to the stars. He said “The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds,” and inspired a generation of Americans to build (in less than 10 years) a spacecraft that could hurl Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. into the dark abyss of space and put them firmly on the moon.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. He uttered the historic words “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Simply put, the world changed that day. We stopped looking at Earth with a narrow-focused lense. Suddenly some of us began to realize that the way the world was looking at itself had to change. In the decades that have since passed, we have sent probes to the end of the solar system; rovers to Mars, and built an International Space Station that has the potential to turn old enemies into new friends.

But President Kennedy’s dream of advancing our scientific goals in America has fallen off track. Failed probe missions and disastrous & horrific shuttle explosions, coupled with drastic budget cuts to NASA’s budget have helped to decrease the significance of space travel in te lives of ordinary people. In that historic moon mission speech, Pres. Kennedy said that the “United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them.”

Where is that passion now? Our Founding Fathers made amazing strides to advance knowledge in our country. Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, a critical idea that led to the invention of electricity. Thomas Jefferson lived a life in pursuit of knowledge, and is credited as the father of modern archeology. Men like these helped propel us from 13 tiny colonies to become the nation of over 300 million we are today. And it took scientists like Robert Goddard and Robert Jones to bring us to where we are today. But space exploration now is severely lacking in interest and budget allocation.

NASA’s current FY 2008 budget of $17.318 billion represents about 0.6% of the $2.9 trillion United States federal budget. The expenditures for the Iraq & Afghanistan conflicts have cost taxpayers approximately $604 billion over the last 7 years, more than the entire dollar amount of 50 years of NASA’s existence. When broken down, the amount of NASA’s budget works out to approximately $57.10 USD per year per taxpayer — $1.09 a week, or $0.15 cents a day in current spending. This is a tiny amount for us to be paying to send scientists to the stars.

The potential for knowledge we can attain by fully funding NASA is truly limitless.

I’ll end with a quote from Kennedy’s 1962 moon mission speech.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.