the last frontier

Space is cool. i wanted to be an astronomer when i was younger....not too long ago, really. (when i realized it involved math, i immediately decided to pursue a career in the nonmathematical fields of writing and thinking.)

so don't get me wrong. i love space, i loved learning the planets unit in school, and i even know how to tell time by the stars (at least i used to), and i made my little sister memorize Jupiter's moons and the distance to the moon (238,000 miles) and to Proxima Centauri (3.2 lightyears). AND i'm not even joking about any of that.

still, i don't understand why we have to spend mind-boggling amounts of money to learn more about space. isn't it cool enough as it is? aren't there people who could really use the money? this Onion article nicely summarizes my feelings towards this issue.

i think the space program, whatever it's called, should be drastically/dramatically cut from our government's budget. if private citizens and organizations want to fund things, go for it. that's cool. i just don't really like so much tax money going towards billion-dollar "exploration" programs that aren't even exciting...not that being exciting would be worth THAT much anyways. i think that money could be better used elsewhere, such as feeding people, keeping them out of gutters, national security, war, etc.

read about the federal NASA budget here. according to that chart, our government gave NASA over 15 billion dollars in 2005 (if i'm reading it right). and they're projected to get over 16 billion in 2007.

if the government just kept that, and stopped NASA totally, maybe they could give us all complimentary subscriptions to the Russian Space Exploration channel. that way, no one would have to give up their habits of watching CGI images of satellites roaming around, and also a fuzzy blue blob, aka the possible atmosphere of Neptune, 24/7. oh wait, no one cares about that anyways.

but seriously. why are we even really concerned about social security? there'd be a few bugs to work out, but i bet we could just give the space money to the old folks as they retire.

or we could give it to africa. or we could buy an oil-producing country and make our own oil. or we could hire more people and make the borders secure. or we could give it to the war. we could give it to all our cities and counties in the form of economic development grants. OR...we could just keep on collecting Mars rocks and taking boring blurry pictures of white specks until they'll all be sold on ebay for $0.99 each.

just now the news said "Astronauts Complete Third And Final Space Walk." um, so? hey, i'd love to walk in space. it'd be like flying. but it's really not all that exciting to hear about anyone else doing it. i think the vast majority of americans only care about space because deep down, we'd all love to spacewalk, and because of that very reason most of us wanted to be astronauts when we were little. but notwithstanding the pseudo-popularity of space exploration, it's certainly not worth billions of dollars each year, and certainly not at a time when we are in war, and while there are people starving all over the planet. how about this: once everything is perfect on our own planet, we start worrying about the others. k?

so, all that to say, space is really cool, but definitely not worth the money we feed it, and there are plenty of ways that money could go to better use. i hope you agree with me.