NASA has many programs years behind schedule and billions over budget.
With our economy so close to falling, what is wrong with Obama saying "let the private sector continue space exploration" and scrapping the very inefficient govt run NASA?
Yes, a few thousand people lose their job - but isn't part of "less spending, smaller govt" being able to slash bloated programs like this? If Obama had just DOUBLED the size of NASA, people would be screaming that he's just blowing $ to watch plants grow in space and private industry can do it way cheaper. Since he's slashing it, people are yelling too.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Filthy rich people watch Briane Greene or Michio Kaku talk about string theory on the history channel and get all giddy about science just like poor people. I'm sure there's more than a few theoretical physicists and astrophysicists that would love to drop their University gigs to get a privately funded research position for a privately owned company.
People are scared of science....I don't know why, but they are.
People are still freaking out about LHC, despite the fact that cosmic rays hit the earth with way more energy than the LHC will produce every single day...and have been hitting the earth every day since long before we were here.
Hell, they had to rename NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) imaging to just MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) because no one would get an MRI when they heard the word "nuclear" in its name.
As soon as "nuclear" is dropped, everyone is ready to climb on in and get their images.
People are scared of what they don't know. Add that fact to the incredible lack of required science education in America and you get what we have.
If you tell someone from Europe that Physics isn't required in all American high schools, they won't believe you.
There are grown adults all over the country that think a heavier person falls faster than a lighter person.....They'll even argue with you about it if you tell them that gravity affects all objects with the same acceleration.
If the private sector was allowed to continue space exploration.....idiots across the country would be up in arms about it. They wouldn't have any fucking idea why they're against it....but they would insist that it was bad.
Eventually some quack would start a webpage with a bunch of gibberish (similar to 2012, reptilian crap, and fake moonlanding sites) that claims the world will end if we privatize space exploration.....and every idiot with a computer will believe every word the quack says.
