We had one more question last night for astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we ran out of time before we could ask it. We wanted to know his thoughts on President Obama's new agenda for NASA. Obama's new budget calls for NASA to stop trying to return to the moon and to privatize space travel for humans and cargo.
Tyson, who 10 years ago stripped Pluto of its status as a planet, says he likes the new plan. Tyson argues that NASA needs far greater ambitions than repeating decades-old missions in orbital space. NASA has been to the moon already, he argues, and it's time for greater ambitions that shuttling people around. If the U.S. hands orbital travel to private companies, then that means orbital travel is no longer a frontier. What NASA needs is steady funding for big science, Tyson tell us. His words have stuck with me all day:
"I tell you, NASA is a force of nature. They're like no other agency. When NASA dreams big, the country dreams big, and when the country dreams big, kids dream big. It attracts the kid biologists, the kid engineers, the kid chemists. It gets them in the pipeline, because it's worthy of their ambitions and their intellect. These are the people who make tomorrow come, who make the tomorrow we want to see."
Tyson's new documentary, The Pluto Files, airs at 8 o'clock Eastern tonight on PBS.
Leave a Comment:
Wish you would've had time for this question. I've been skeptical of the Obama plan for NASA. Hearing Tyson's view is helpful. And his above quote is, simply, priceless. I'm choking up as I read and re-read it.
I pretty much adore anyone who makes science fun again. He has a solid point, too - we should be finding new horizons to aim for.
Speaking of awesome science role models, whatever happened to Caroline Moore, the teenager who discovered the supernova? TRMS has been neglecting its Astronomy Czar.
I'm actually a little sad because of the new policy. Not so much for terminating the rocket program, although I kning of liked it, but that it did away with the ambition to go back to the moon to build a lunar base. While I like most of Tyson's comments, the idea we've "been" to the moon is a flawed view many people have. To say we know the moon by only traveling to 6 locations 40 years ago is like saying I know Egypt because I've been to Massachusetts. And I was totally stoked to think we were moving toward our first off-world habitation on another body.
Also the idea that we are "repeating decades-old missions" shows another bias. A lot of scientists seem to discount the engineering feats we do every day at the ISS. It's amazing how that was created and what we've learned from it.
But such is life. I'm glad the Maddow show keeps on having great science guests.
I completely agree with you, every year we keep discovering new things about the earth and life within it. Weve been to the moon a few times and we think we know all there is to know about it, that makes no sense.