Spaced out

Whenever I hear someone complaining about NASA’s budget, I feel like clobbering them with one of those Marvin the Martian dolls you win at state fairs. And then I don’t, because that would be dumb.

Still, that folks find the space agency overfunded and irrelevant is an irksome fact, particularly if you’re the kind of person that sees a photo of Saturn and starts drooling like a bacon-starved Doberman. Space enthusiasts tend to be a nerdy bunch, and I’m not about to claim exemption from this club; even our relatively small solar system, a mere speck of dust in the galaxy, fills us with a kind of wonder not unfamiliar to small children and drug addicts – perhaps the only two social groups that can stare at a pink nebula for hours without once thinking about work or frilly underthings.

That wonder, by itself, isn’t reason enough to keep the space agency in a decent cash flow. But as it turns out, it doesn’t need to be.

Remember the moon landing? Of course you do. That’s like asking if you remember your first kiss, or the first time you realized Glenn Beck was clinically insane. (I’m not above dated cheap shots.) Even if you weren’t alive in ‘69, you’ve seen that grainy, black-and-white footage of Neil Armstrong taking his first tentative steps. It had an impact beyond just giving Americans license to stick out their tongues and say “neener-neener” to those vodka-swilling commies in the Soviet.

The legacy of the Apollo program was that it inspired young people to pursue careers in science and engineering, which was no small feat considering the myriad distractions of the time, like growing out one’s hair so as to resemble a sasquatch with radiation poisoning. Because we live in a world increasingly populated by technology, having a workforce versed in these fields is almost an economic necessity. Which is a troubling reality, because as it stands now, the science that captivates most young people these days is the science of generating hits on YouTube; while you and I benefit by getting to watch videos of drunken teenagers lighting their farts on fire, few of these geniuses would be able to tell you that the flammable gas in question is methane. (And if these clods knew their geometry, they could get a decent angle going on the lighter.)

I don’t have to tell you about the woefully crappy state of the American educational system. We’re reminded of it all the time. We rank this in math, and that in science, and we stink at reading, and the whole sorry mess sucks cow manure through a straw. We get it. And while there are a lot of systemic flaws that are to blame, and a comprehensive overhaul is obviously overdue, we could at least start by inspiring children to become literate in the fundamental laws of nature and the universe. At its best, that’s what NASA does.

Can I geek out for a minute? Like, massively geek out? I’ve been fascinated, in the last couple of years, by astronomy and physics. Let’s skip over what this implies about my social life – point is, I can’t seem to get enough of this stuff. One of the most mind-blowing things I’ve learned is that a lot of the heavier elements, including the ones that make up our bodies, are actually created on the insides of dying stars. As a star runs out of fuel, it starts losing its battle with gravity; and as gravity crushes it, that pressure starts to “cook” elements like silicon, zinc, carbon, and a bunch of other stuff you find in your morning multivitamin. Then the dying star starts producing iron, and that’s the final nail in the coffin – turns out stars don’t like iron very much. The iron causes the star to explode, spewing all of these newly created elements into the cosmos, and seeding it with raw materials for the next generation of stars, planets, and smarmy game show hosts. Think about that the next time you cook eggs in an iron frying pan.

 Knowledge like that changes the way you see certain things. And it’s information that’s verified, and sometimes discovered outright, by the work of NASA scientists – who, in the course of their research, will often stumble upon the development of new technologies, including laser light therapy procedures that ease the painful side effects of cancer treatments. The cost for all this? According to the Office of Management and Budget, about four-tenths of a penny per tax dollar. Annually, Americans spend thousands of times that amount on Cheetos and rentals of old Police Academy movies.

You know what? Double it. Make it a penny per tax dollar. I’m sure the suggestion would send fiscal conservatives into paroxysms of foamy rage, but hopefully the cooler heads among them – the ones with business backgrounds, perhaps – would be familiar with a concept called return on investment. See, we get something for that money. And I’m not talking about the thrill of seeing a human being step foot on Mars, although that would undoubtedly rank as the coolest event in human history since the invention of the Game Boy.

What we get, my terrestrial friends, is a legion of young adults with a renewed interest in fields that will determine whether the U.S. stays globally competitive. We get a wealth of side technologies that make our lives easier, and in some cases, saves them. But more importantly – at least to us nerdy types – we gain an ever-deeper understanding of the laws governing the cosmos, and the origins of the universe itself. Most of us, to varying degrees, feel that gnawing need to know. Maybe that’s because, on some deep intrinsic level, we see a star or a gas cloud and sense that we’re made of the same stuff; it’s a connection all living things must feel, if they could only tune out the interference. We are the universe. It’s literally in each of us.

Kids and teens, facing an ailing educational system, deserve to know that. In the long run, we can fix what’s broken in a series of small steps. In the short run, we need something more dramatic.

Like, say, a giant leap.