Why We Fly

I am sympathetic to the view that space exploration is a luxury. I don't disagree, even. But NASA's budget is not the reason gas costs $6 a gallon, or why we don't have universal healthcare or pre-K. We don't have those because those in charge, and the people who voted for them, have chosen for us not to have those. It is a false binary that we even have to choose at all. The U.S. is the richest polity that has ever existed; there is more than enough money to go around to satisfy basic human services while still funding spaceflight. The people denying us those basic services would very much like for you to identify NASA as the culprit for its $24.4 billion budget, which represents 0.35 percent of all government spending, at the same time a pointless and purposeless war costs us a billion dollars a day, and the government seeks a $1.5 trillion defense budget.

And look at all of what NASA is able to accomplish with that little bit of the federal budget.

It was an extraordinarily human moment. Humanity feels a little more tangible when surrounded by nothing but machines and darkness; Wiseman's is a soft beating heart in a big black void that has carried everything, even its grief, farther than any heart has ever been. And now when he and his daughters look up to the Moon, he'll be able to point to Carroll Wiseman's memorial. When we explore, we bring our humanity with us, and leave it wherever we go.