Oh Man! Does this thread ever hit on subjects that tighten my jaw and raise my blood pressure! 1......2......3.....>..10
OK. Calm now. First off, it isn't that intelligence is dropping off. It's education, and the desire to be educated that has dropped off. I have met people who actually think The Flintstones is representative of the past and fundamentalist religion is the worst offender since not only does it teach that Science can't be trusted, even while it clamors for scientific respecaiblity, on it's most basic level it teaches people they are too stupid to figure anything out for themselves and are better off accepting "higher authority" and any critical thought is demonized. For example, a common "argument" against both Evolution and the non-biblical age of the Earth is that "Carbon 14 dating isn't that accurate". If one asks just how inaccurate do you suppose it must be to be off by a factor of almost a billion to one and who in their right mind would even use a yardstick with a 10% error margin, they are speechless because they've never even bothered to ask such a question. Try explaining that gravity is a theory in the scientific sense. If one asks fundamental questions such as "Is the Universe knowable?" and applies it as in "If the fossil record actually reflects reality how can the Earth only be 6000 years old?" I have often gotten the answer "God can make the world in any way he chooses so he could make the fossil record appear to say something it doesn't" never mind that The Trickster role is supposed to be reserved for Satan and Man! will you get accused of Blasphemy and Heresy then! Faith is not subject to Reason so it is beyond me why they aren't kept separate
The above issue isn't the one that upsets me most since I accept that some people may choose Faith alone and others can keep their religious faith separate from this dimension and somehow remain essentially balanced. However the typical usage of Space Exploration funding as being wasteful in the same breath as "If we can put a man on the moon why can't we...?" insert favorite cause. These same people have no concept of the percentage of their tax dollar that goes to Space Exploration. In the US in 1969 the culmination of the Appolo Project took the largest bite our of the GDP and that was barely One Percent (0.01) of GDP or 2.1% of federal budget. In 2006 it had dropped to 0.0017 GDP or 5.6% of federal budget. However you cut it, it just isn't even a reasonably large percentage for research. It barely compares to actual waste from any point of view.
That was what it costs and a percentage that few detractors bother to know. The upside is equally ignored. Without the dedication to the Apollo program alone none of us dare imagine how different this world would be. There exists not only the direct technological spinoffs in literally every field including electronics and miniaturization, textiles, computers - hardware and software, biology and medicine (even in Sports medicine), chemistry, building materials, insulation and power conservation, solar power, fuel cells, and on and on (some are here
NASA spin-off - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) but even that makes no mention of the incredible effect on processes, how business works together, how things are shipped, how radically new products can be developed. Whether you think about people who would not be alive, serices you would not have, or economic advantages your country wouldn't have enjoyed (how might The Cold War turned out?) or even international cooperation, the return on investment is almost beyond calculation and that is not even bothering to consider the increase in the body of knowledge of the world in which we live. We just take it all for granted.
The worst part is that we, the US, dropped the ball. All that networked cooperation just died on the vine and horses were changed in midstream if the return to a capsule-like craft and the scrapping of the shuttle are any indication. That's what was wasted. If you weren't alive then or have forgotten, it wasn't the money, that relative miserable pittance, that was lost. What was a crime to lose was the impetus and noble goals and so much of the reason why was that lousy war, the assassinations and political shenanigans that made the populace wonder if anything really mattered with a world spinning out of control approaching the brink of nuclear-tipped missiles raining self-destruction. What an unutterable shame.
Space exploration won't likely die out but it has been already set back far and for no good reason. Von Braun's plan to put Man on Mars before 2000 was abandoned to rust out just like the beautiful Saturn V which I heard doesn't even have blueprints left in existence. What a waste.
If NASA has setup funding for public relations I think that is a good thing. However since broadcasting is supposed to donate a certain amout of time to Public Service Announcements I can think of few nobler services than to communicate to the populace what we gained, what it actually cost relative to less positive pursuits, and what we lost, if only in the aspirations of our children.
