Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why Space Matters [Watch]
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Alcalde March|April cover star Neil deGrasse Tyson, MA ’83, may be one of the best orators alive today. He’s at it again with a compelling new video plea for the Penny4NASA drive, which advocates doubling NASA’s funding from .5 percent of the U.S. national budget to 1 percent.
Tyson argues passionately that we can’t understand our planet unless we leave it. He connects the famous 1968 Earthrise photo, taken during the Apollo 8 mission, to a whole host of milestones, from the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency to the invention of the catalytic converter. The impact of a photo that allowed us to see Earth as a unified whole cannot be overstated, he says.
“We’re still in Vietnam—there’s still campus unrest,” he says in the video, referring to the years after the photo’s release. “Yet we found the time to start thinking about Earth.”
“We need to look at NASA not as a handout, but as an investment,” Tyson says. “As goes the health of space-faring ambitions … so goes the future of America.”
Featured photo via Flickr Creative Commons (Marion Doss).
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3 Comments
If this video gave me goosebumps. The #1 problem NASA faces is a marketing problem. People line up for the next generation iPad because of U2 and some dancing silhouettes. Imagine what the potential of man could be done if space and exploration were a consumer product again?
Jon,
I agree with you. Science as a whole needs to be marketed more strategically, and I think a focus on a frontier like space would be the ideal start
Tyson is spot on regarding many of his powerful points here. I wish I could subjectively donate all of my tax dollars to noble research like space exploration…
I don’t think interest in space has never died down; just money to it. Did you see what the transit of Venus did to people? Look at the private space companies that have popped up. Even NGT is getting a prime-time network television show. Education and research, including NASA, are among the first to get cut from politicians.