CelticBear’s Musings
Posts Feed
The Value of NASA
Posted by CelticBear on October 19th, 2006
From BadAstronomy blog:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/18/katie-couric-is-a-bonehead/
Phil discusses how it’s sad someone whose career depends on the fruits of space research and development would question whether a paltry sum of money should be spent on continued space research.
Read the article, please; it’s fascinating!
Here’s a snip:
Also, I have heard the this argument that NASA money should be diverted to social programs a million times, and it’s wrong every time. First, 17 billion bucks sounds like a lot, but on the scale of the US government it really isn’t. NASA is the smallest of the government agencies, and the budget is not very big compared to others. Did you know we are spending 11 million dollars per hour on Iraq? That’s nearly 2 billion dollars every week! Now does NASA’s budget sound so big?
(Bold font mine, italics his.)
October 20th, 2006 at 9:27 am
You are very insightful.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:38 am
I’m not. Phil Plait is. =) I’m just a parrot for his insight. But thanks.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
[...] a planet killer that will hit us is ridiculously high. But that’s not the point. People (like Katie Couric) ask, why even spend $17 billion on space when there’s starving people on the planet? Well, [...]