What have you done for me lately, NASA?
Attention: I hate NASA!! There, I've said it. I really hate the whole NASA space program. I don't understand why people get so excited about rocket ships blasting off into space and astronauts exploring other planets. I know it makes a great front page photo op, but what good does that do us here on Earth? I mean, we’ve discovered other planets and special stars and taken some pretty cool pictures of outer space, but in a practical sense, what’s the impact? Are we aiming to set up space stations for Earthlings to permanently reside on? Are we digging for buried treasure? Is all of the time, money and work that goes into space exploration actually protecting the planet? My favorite newspaper headline in recent years was, “President Bush wants robots on moon by 2008.” Need I say more?
According to NASA, these are their goals:
Meanwhile, here are on Earth, our atmosphere is changing. Pollution threatens the oceans. Over fishing for toxic fish is a problem. Global warming is heating up the planet. The polar ice caps are melting. The Gulf Stream is threatening to change the entire climate of the UK to that of Russia. Bye Bye glaciers, hello vodka and snow suits! In the States this week, the National Weather Advisory is warning many parts of the country where temps that should be in the mid-80s are well over 100 degrees. We’re running out of oil all over, my friends. It’s not just those evildoing Arabs that are hogging the oil. It’s just depleted. And so, BushCo wants to dig up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for cheaper, more profitable oil. Goodbye ponds, rivers and wildlife, hello new roads, hundreds of miles of pipelines, yards of gravel, and massive production facilities!
Our government loves to fund the boys exploring space, but forgets to fund the environmental causes here on Earth. I don’t know. I’m sure there have been impressive scientific discoveries, but to me it just seems like a big waste of time and money. So today the Discovery launches while the Bush family watches and ignores the destruction, terror, mayhem as usual. But yay! For remarkable NASA and it’s fascinating work. Thousands of engineers, millions of dollars, burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, a few nasty explosions…and? Keep finding things, boys. Keep “discovering,” while the rest of us down here on Earth scorch in reality.
According to NASA, these are their goals:
In the pursuit of our mission goals, we will continue to expand the International Space Station's remarkable capabilities, send robotic spacecraft to explore fascinating places throughout the solar system, use telescopes to find Earthlike planets orbiting nearby stars, and use satellites to help us better understand Earth's dynamic climate.
Meanwhile, here are on Earth, our atmosphere is changing. Pollution threatens the oceans. Over fishing for toxic fish is a problem. Global warming is heating up the planet. The polar ice caps are melting. The Gulf Stream is threatening to change the entire climate of the UK to that of Russia. Bye Bye glaciers, hello vodka and snow suits! In the States this week, the National Weather Advisory is warning many parts of the country where temps that should be in the mid-80s are well over 100 degrees. We’re running out of oil all over, my friends. It’s not just those evildoing Arabs that are hogging the oil. It’s just depleted. And so, BushCo wants to dig up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for cheaper, more profitable oil. Goodbye ponds, rivers and wildlife, hello new roads, hundreds of miles of pipelines, yards of gravel, and massive production facilities!
Our government loves to fund the boys exploring space, but forgets to fund the environmental causes here on Earth. I don’t know. I’m sure there have been impressive scientific discoveries, but to me it just seems like a big waste of time and money. So today the Discovery launches while the Bush family watches and ignores the destruction, terror, mayhem as usual. But yay! For remarkable NASA and it’s fascinating work. Thousands of engineers, millions of dollars, burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, a few nasty explosions…and? Keep finding things, boys. Keep “discovering,” while the rest of us down here on Earth scorch in reality.
posted by Freewendy @ 10:16 AM
14 Comments:
At 10:29 AM,
Grandma said…
Here's an article on the global warming/Gulf stream in Europe connection:
At 9:50 AM,
Anonymous said…
"The next time you reach for your cell phone, thank NASA. If your doctor recommends an MRI, thank NASA. The space agency deserves another moment of gratitude when you pop in a DVD and settle back for a good movie, or when you reach for a composite golf club, hoping to out-drive your buddies. And think of NASA when a smoke detector blares to save your life.
NASA often is relegated to elitist-bureaucracy status, seen as driven by starry-eyed scientists looking to grab funds away from better use on Earth. But since the days of Apollo, NASA has contributed to the technological advancement of everyday life on Earth as much as — and maybe more than — anything else." http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-01-21-eicher_x.htm
At 12:33 PM,
Anonymous said…
My beef is with NASA is the historic level of funding that could have otherwise been directed to fund more practical science research. Must we launch ships to the moon to create commercial products? Microwave ovens, fax machines, and rechargeable batteries are other nonessential technilogial inventions…did NASA have a hand in those too? Smart people, often scientists, create such things. Many times, are not employed by the government that takes credit for such inventions. For example, the cell phone was created by inventor Martin Cooper on April 3,1973. He worked for Motorola, not NASA. Raymond Damadian invented the MRI. He was also not an employee of NASA. I think a more cost-effective approach to developing new inventions would be funding research program directly rather zooming around the cosmos and distracting America from less glamorous government activity (ah-hem, death tolls in Iraq & Afghanistan).
Other things that NASA did not invent, but will happily take credit for are:
The cordless hand drill. NASA commissioned Black and Decker for the job.
Roofs of sports stadiums and shopping centers- the Owens-Corning company was paid by NASA to develop special fiberglass fabric for the Apollo moonsuits that was later used for roofs of sports stadiums and shopping centers.
Jaws of Life-- Hi-Shear Technology Corporation, the company that's been supplying NASA with nuts and bolts since the Apollo mission, created the Jaws of Life.
At 1:11 PM,
Dustin said…
I'm confused, if NASA's needs help to push technology forward isn't that a benefit? Without the funding and push of NASA why would a company have pursued these inventions? Science for science’s sake will be increasingly important as the environmental problems you mention become worse. I sincerely doubt that we would even be aware of Global Warming without the scientific advances allowed by the space program. Here's ethical atheists list of space program benefits The current administration would love to see scientific development in the hands of the private sector; watch the national laboratories being pushed to work with Bechtel et all and watch the strongest scientists leave or choose a university job instead.
At 2:05 PM,
Anonymous said…
the anonymoous comment is typical propaganda and nonsense (USA Today - need I say more?). Uncle - thanks for doing the real inventors.
NASA has always and will always have one purpose: weapons and military research. All the billions spent have been to develop long range missiles, and robotic missile delivery systems. The Appolo missions also had to do with impressing the Soviets and Chinese with our rocket technology.
I too was inspired by the space program as a kid. It inspires us all, which is exactly why it exists, as another way to obfuscate and justify military spending. Space research is wonderful and important, but academia and the private sector are better suited toward the task than war mongering governments and ill-directed tax dollars.
At 2:31 PM,
Freewendy said…
I said in my original post that I’m sure NASA has created (or claims to have created) many beneficial and cool inventions. I’m not denying that, though, I would argue that a host of them are luxuries and not necessities (cell phones, DirectTV, Golf balls with greater accuracy and distance, joysticks for computers and entertainment systems) and some have cause more harm then help (disposable diapers). Plus, many of them items on the Ethical Atheists lists are spinoffs, such as the ones I’ve already listed that NASA didn’t actually invent but rather subcontracted other companies and then used to boost their own PR (via children's text books).
I’m not trying to abolish NASA, just saying that the fascination/overhyping of NASA annoys me. Also, according to Wikipedia, the greenhouse effect, was first discovered by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in the pre-NASA days. I wish NASA would focus solely on solutions to global warming and stop contributing to it.
At 2:45 PM,
Dustin said…
Private sector is better suited to one thing- profit oriented science. That's why we have several impotence drugs but no malaria drug. There's no profit in it. I won't bother to address the fallacy that all NASA research is militarily oriented. Without department of energy money the mapping of the human genome would be unavailable to scientists in their work. The Private sector attempt to map the genome tanked when it was announced that the genome could not be patented. I'm not sure where ttt thinks academia gets its funding but as someone who works at a University of California National Laboratory I can assure you Government funding is needed. Oh that's right, we just build bombs. Forget all the scientists I watch daily working on cancer, fertility, birth defects and genetics. Science is under attack in this country right now, ironically when it is most needed to solve the growing problems we face. If it is continued to be dismissed as "boys and their toys" we can look forward to more churches, fewer women in science and more ass-backwards technophobe fundamentalist presidents. Count me out.
At 3:36 PM,
Grandma said…
Maybe I don't get it. What does space exploration have to do with government labs? If NASA funds them, that's cool, but why do they have to send rockets into space? The vast majority of NASA's budget has been spent on human spaceflight. Instead of trying to impress the world with our rockets, NASA could spend that money on research.
At 3:48 PM,
Kevin Costa said…
I think I have to side with Dustin on this one. Didn't NASA put into orbit the very satellites that help scientists understand and fight global warming?
NASA's $16B budget is 0.7% of the federal budget. In 1997, Americans spent over 19 times as much at restaurants as the federal government spent on NASA.
My feeling is that less should be spent on defense and more should be spent on all science programs, including NASA.
At 4:04 PM,
Grandma said…
What are the astronauts that just went up in the Discovery space shuttle contributing to science? The shuttle program doesn't fund scientific discoveries. They are building the ISS, a colossal waste of time and money.
At 5:06 PM,
Kevin Costa said…
Yes, the current shuttle flight is just to make sure everything works again, but it enables future science that actually does make a difference. Yes, the ISS is expensive and has many critics who believe the money would be better spent on unmanned projects like the Hubble and the Mars Explorer, but the benefits of ISS might come later. Don't you want to know if humans can live in space and travel to other worlds? Where's your sense of adventure?!
At 8:48 AM,
Freewendy said…
Personally, I don't care about living in space or travelling to other worlds. I'm more concerned with this planet surviving another 100 years.
Good debate. I still hate NASA. Citizens Against Government Waste Unite!
At 10:46 AM,
Kevin Costa said…
Not to continue to harp on this, but, well, I'm going to continue to harp on this:
Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much
Jon Miller, a NW political scientist in biomedical communications, says that only 20%-25% of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," and describes this as a real threat to effective democracy given the scientific underpinnings of politicized issues such as stem cell research and global warming. In the 18th century, you didn't need to know much about science to be an effective participant in government. With "acid rain, nuclear power, infectious diseases -- the world is a little different."
I'm not suggesting that people who hate NASA are necessarily scientific luddites, but there are shades of gray, no? Conversely, many would call me an ultra-idealist with an unrealistic faith in science solving all the world's problems. (Funnily enough, that is what I believe, my only qualifier being that we'd need as many people in white lab coats armed with pipettes as we now have in camouflage fatigues armed with automatic rifles. But this is a thread all its own.)
In any case, I hope the 4-6 regular readers of this blog will 'pray' that the world listens to Jon Miller.
At 2:46 PM,
Freewendy said…
My beef is with NASA, not science in general. NASA's space station is a mighty expensive hobby with possible very-long-term results, which seems tragically wasteful and just a little silly in times of economic & environmental chaos, no?
To me, it seems all that matters is that it makes Pres. Bush look cool and it's fun for coloring books.
Still beating that dead horse,
UncleWendy
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