Yesterday was a sad day for NASA who were forced to halt all education and public outreach activities including public engagement out outreach events, programs, activities and products. These spending cuts, enacted by congress through inaction will directly affect the education, inspiration, prosperity and competitiveness of our future generations of the USA (India and China are both investing heavily in space exploration programs). We just reduced our investment in space exploration from 1/2 of one cent!
We need more education and more roll models for our kids like our astronauts, scientists and educators and fewer who provide no improvement to our society like our “reality” television and silly celebrities. We need more funding for things that will improve our society through education and inspiration and fewer things that will tear it down like fear and war.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has some powerful words about this, please watch the video below. It’s heart wrenching and inspirational. http://www.youtube.com/embed/CbIZU8cQWXc
Here is the NASA Internal Memo: http://spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=43632
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Posted By: Joe Basirico