CelticBear’s Musings

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.)