Sunday, November 29, 2009

Priorities

"In the days of my youth..."

Let me take you back some forty years ago. The United States had landed on the moon. We had cutting edge technology and some of the sharpest minds on the planet.

Most of our cutting edge technology was either coming from military technology or the space program.

Many people said why don't we spend that money that's going to the space program on things that matter here on earth. Like getting rid of poverty in the U.S., or hunger. Maybe spend it on education.

None of the money pulled away from the space program went to ending poverty, or hunger and let's not even begin to talk about the funding for education in this country.

We now import the bright minds to do the intellectual development work. Well we did when we could still afford to..

It reminds me of the rational that N.Y. State gave for creating a state lottery: the money would go to the education department and help maintain the schools and develop better curriculum. Yeah, like that happened.

Ok, so the few billions that were cut from NASA's budget improved life on earth how? We still have children in this country that go to bed hungry, but now we have even less well educated children.. as well as less well educated adults. So that's two areas that didn't improve.

And let's take a look at the poverty issue in this country. Are we better off now?

Some forty years ago the country turned it's back on exploration and looked inwards, at least economically. Of course the decision was made by politicians and leaders of 'industry'. But the public swallowed the rationale.

And so here we are.

Our last president said Let's go back to the moon.. let's go to mars. But now we don't have the means to do it. And even more laughable is the idea that they'll use slightly beefed up Apollo era designs to do the job.

Shoestring designing and shoestring budgets are a sure way to insure that things will fail. Because the design work will fall not to the best design teams but rather to the cheapest. Nearly every loss of life in the history of nasa can be traced back to that issue.

You get what you pay for. Just look at all the cool weapons systems our military has now. Most of it is 'just in case' weapon systems, some is 'we'll never need it, but it scares the big boys'. and all of it cost billions of dollars. Which of course couldn't be spent on education.. or food programs for the less well off, or a first world style health care system.

But let's go back to that phrase 'you get what you pay for'. It actually works both ways. If the federal state and local governments don't invest in keeping their citizens educated and healthy then that 'resource' begins to degrade. And when you need better quality output you find that it's no longer there and you need to look outside your borders for the talent you used to find everywhere inside your own.

Need a border fence built? Quite a few comedians made jokes about who would actually be doing the construction. And people laughed at those jokes because there was a kernel of truth in them. Need parts for that new cutting edge fighter, those are being made in China. Here's a fun fact. Only five percent of the clothing worn by americans, i.e. U.S. citizens is made in the U.S.A.

So. Welcome to the twenty first century, where this country is fast becoming a client state of countries we used to scorn.

Am I advocating hatred? No, I'm advocating that people should start to pay more attention to what's important for the good of their children and their communities. It's not sitting in front of a television, it's not playing Call of Duty 2.

It's not blindly going through the day and thinking that someone else will handle the hard question and do the right thing.

That has seldom happened in this country, and when it has it was only due to some dire emergency. Most of the time greed has ruled. And maybe a little greed is tolerable. But when the greed takes teachers out of the schools and leaves children hungry something has to change. And there are only a few options.

First Option: less children. With less children the strain on the education system drops, there'd be less hungry children... and eventually a smaller work force. Maybe that would be smart? Less people vying for jobs would mean less people out of work. With less children, there'd be less of a strain on the resources of the country and less goods would be needed to be imported. Our deficit would plummet!

And that scenario would go over like a lead balloon.

Second Option: Intelligent budgeting of monies and resources. By that I mean first take care of the real issues. Education, infrastructure, health care, maintaining the military services at reasonable strengths with the caveat that weapons systems development, (i.e. the wish list), can only be addressed when the needs of the citizens have been met. What's all this got to do with Space and what I opened this commentary with?
Simply this there's always been an excuse why 'we' needed to cut the budget of this or that but there's always been one area where the budget usually grows and grows.

Do we *really* need to put robot mules for the troops before educating the children of this country? Or airborne lasers to shoot down missiles which may one day exist? What ever happened to the aegis system?

Priorities. There's a magic word to conjure with, why not put the people at the top of the Priorities list.
Do that and this country might well be able to afford to go back to the moon, and on to mars. That's if we get past the climate change issue.