Space Exploration and the culture of innovation: an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

[LongTomH]

Great article at the SFGate blog: http://blog.sfgate.com/tmiller/2012/03/28/space-exploration-and-the-culture-of-innovation-an-interview-with-neil-degrasse-tyson/

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson makes one of the most sophisticated defenses of space exploration that I've seen to date. He makes a great argument that the Sixties Apollo program was the great engine of both innovation and economic growth in that period.

But when I look around me and see statements people make who wield resources and who wield power, and that statement exhibits some kind of profound illiteracy, then I worry for the future of the country – it’ll be, “America? Oh, that’s the 20th century country, the one that really made a difference to the world in the 20th century. Oh, they’ve faded since then.”

And we know why we made a difference in the 20th century and we ought to be able to prevent failure in the 21st century if we just study the problem – even if only so briefly. So with regard to the comments about attending college, politicians will say what they feel they need to or want to – I don’t even think much about politicians. I think about the people in the audience who applaud the politicians. They are your fellow countrymen and they’re the ones you live with – that should be who we target for education and enlightenment.

Because they would then not accept a statement by a presidential candidate that says that urging people to go to college is an act of snobbery. Now that being said, the educated elite is not without their own actual snobbery. And I kind of an anti-elitist in that regard.

Dr. Tyson made this brilliant statement defending space on Bill Maher's show:

[longship]

1. Great read. Tyson nails it

R&K

[jakeXT]

2. He is right about the military

What’s not widely known is that Sputnik itself was a hollowed out, intercontinental ballistic missile.  And you put it in a little thing that sends a radio bleep and you call it “Fellow Traveler,” which is the translation of “Sputnik” and you have something that on the surface looks quite innocent and scientifically motivated.

But the military viewed it quite differently at the time.  And so our reaction was entirely militaristically driven.  And so I think we need to be honest about that as a chapter of our past.  So many people have cleansed that memory and think of it as a time of great exploration and discovery, which, of course, it was.

But if you don’t understand the motivation for it, you won’t understand then why it all came to an end.  When we went to the moon and realized that the Soviet Union had no realistic plans of getting to the moon, then we stopped going to the moon.

That’s a retrospectively obvious step for the United States to take when you realize that we only went to the moon for military reasons.  The space enthusiasts of the day kept saying, “Oh, we’re on the moon; we should be on Mars in ten years.”  That’s if it was driven by exploration, but it’s never been driven by exploration.

I still wonder what the X-37 B is doing up there?

Military's Secret 'Space Plane' Mission Extended Indefinitely: Very few people know the purpose behind the Air Force's X-37B, even while it continues to orbit close to a Chinese space lab.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-201203261013usnewsusnwr201203230323x37bmar26,0,5308236.story

[bananas]

3. He was on c-span booktv this weekend

Video online here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/305092-1