Our new world is so close...

[gaudior]

This is a call for people to sign a petition to give people the option of donating to NASA when they file their taxes. It could raise tremendous amounts of money for an organization which does important work, but is sadly underfunded. Go sign!

--R

Comments

[navrins]

I'd rather donate to (or invest in) Virgin Galactic. I approve of what NASA is supposed to do, but I think they currently suck at doing it, and more public money won't solve that problem. NASA advanced the technology to the point where the private sector can take over, and for that I respect them. But now the private sector should take over, and is in fact doing so, and is going to do far more, more efficiently, than NASA will.

If I'm going to have the option of donating to another government-run organization on my taxes, how about public schools?

[feir-fireb.livejournal.com]

Sure, NASA's human flight program is full of problems and delays (and it's not clear if going back to square 1 every time a new administration comes along will help or not), but NASA does a lot more than just that.

For perspective, NASA Astrophysics gets about as much every year as the government will happily come up with for "Cash for Clunkers" the week that it runs out of money. That's less than 8% of the whole NASA budget, less than 3% of the Department of Education budget, and less than 0.3% of what gets spent on public schools nationally (at a per-pupil expenditure rate of twice what parochial schools spend with often significantly better results).

But even so we're currently in a golden age of astronomy, and if we don't keep sending up new space telescopes to replace (and hopefully surpass) the old ones when they die, we'll also lose significant knowledge infrastructure as that scientific community contracts. Certain types of astrophysics require LEO at a minimum and benefit significantly from heavy lifters, whoever provides them. Virgin Galactic isn't there yet, but hopefully SpaceX will be soon. Astrophysics is also one of those things that has virtually no marketability, yet comes up with the most surprising and profound scientific results, is much loved by the public, and is arguably a "hallmark of civilization" to which the median family income contributes less than the cost of a tall brewed coffee annually. For that, humanity gets to see and analyze 10^28 or more times the stuff that we could ever hope to visit in person.