The Cavalier Daily
Serving the University Community Since 1890

YAHNIAN: The interstellar power of NASA

The space program will continue to be vital to American society

After NASA announced Sept. 28 the discovery of liquid water on Mars, a debate exploded in the following months over the importance of this discovery. While many expressed enthusiastic fascination at this historic finding, some lambasted it as a trivial nugget of information that will have little to no effect on our daily lives. “Why should we care?” was a common theme within this dissenting viewpoint. However, an analysis of this discovery within the larger context of NASA’s total economic and educational impact on the American populace reveals that not only are we severely underfunding a critical driver of growth, but also that we still fail to grasp the importance of scientific discovery.

As various papers and studies have concluded, NASA spending has generally benefited the American economy. One study even concluded that for each dollar that the federal government spends on NASA, there is an economic return of seven to $14. Many of the technologies we enjoy today — from vacuums and ear thermometers to air conditioning units and memory foam — all originate from NASA-licensed spin-off technologies. Overall, when the NASA budget is a larger share of GDP, we see periods of economic expansion. Over and above the positive ramifications of government investment stimulating the economy, an increased NASA budget creates network effects as the agency pervades the leisure activities within our culture and enchants the minds of explorers in our education system.

While Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye and many others courageously seek to inform people about the benefits of NASA programs, it’s easy to see how continued appropriations to distant space explorations can appear wasteful when much of the population continues to lack adequate food and clothing. Indeed, NASA’s approved budget for fiscal year 2016 is roughly $19.3 billion. Reported by The Cavalier Daily as $800 million more than requested, it might seem all is right in the world, yet examining the budget within a historical context is essential. While I applaud Congress for increasing the funding for NASA this year, spending is still around 0.65 percent of the total federal budget, a far cry from pre-2000 levels when the budget fluctuated from peaks in excess of 4 percent to troughs around 0.75 percent.

Part of the problem is that today’s public has become disaffected from its engagement with science, unlike the public of the 1960s and 1970s. Television broadcasts of NASA missions were a public necessity as millions apprehensively watched us foray into the great unknown. We were pioneers. Our cell phones today have more computing power than the computers we used to go to the moon. Yet, under the crushing weight of limitless content, the general public doesn’t have as strong a connection to the sciences as we once did. Sure, NASA and other space companies make tons of real-life content, but it pales in comparison to the visceral power of Hollywood movies. Why watch five hours of an admittedly boring NASA pod launch when you can be dazzled with explosions and black holes in “Interstellar”?

On top of the present and future economic and educational impacts of NASA, the agency is a fundamental driver of scientific discovery. Tackling questions about the most stimulating of topics and continuously searching for answers to our place in the universe, NASA has undoubtedly been a trailblazer. The delightful array of private space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is a testament to NASA’s incredible effect on American society, culture and economy. While these private companies search for a way to make a buck in the future — which is good for the industry — it’s more critical now than ever that we continue to invest in NASA missions, explorations and experiments that will spurn even more private investment in the future. Thus, NASA and new private space companies should not be seen as antagonists but instead as mutually beneficial teammates, with the former acting as a catalyst for the latter.

Although space exploration lacks some of the mystique it once had, there are countless questions awaiting our solutions on the subsurface oceans of Europa and in the magnetic fields of Ganymede. While our own planet offers us a fascinating array of scientific possibilities, the infinite realm of outer space opportunities is too critical to underfund and misunderstand. Even though the days of the nostalgic moon landing in NASA’s early history are behind us, we are still inventors and frontiersmen, explorers and pioneers. In the words of the great Matthew McConaughey, “Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.”

Ben Yahnian is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at b.yahnian@cavalierdaily.com.

Comments

Latest Podcast

The University’s Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment and Undergraduate Admission, Greg Roberts, provides listeners with an insight into how the University conducts admissions and the legal subtleties regarding the possible end to the consideration of legacy status.



https://open.spotify.com/episode/02ZWcF1RlqBj7CXLfA49xt