NASA Pros And Cons

Reinvigorating NASA with more money will inspire kids in classrooms all around the United States. They will look up to the heroes who were able to step foot on a different planet. Equivalently, to students who grew up in the late 60’s and 70’s when the US first landed on the moon. Scott Grillo (2011) comments in a USA Today piece about how fortunate he is being a kid during the time of the Apollo programs. He explains how inspiring it was seeing the frontier of possible be pushed, and how it encouraged him to pursue a masters in chemistry and have a career in aviation (Grillo, 2011). This is an effect NASA has that is not able to be measured in graphs or data points, but in lives changed and career paths altered. Having students look up …show more content…
There is really not one specific group that wholeheartedly opposes NASA. More Republicans tend to vote to cut NASA’s budget than Democrats, but support comes from both sides. This is not a politically polarizing controversy, unlike most. But many people do oppose doubling NASA’s budget, since it has not happened yet. Most supporters of cutting funding to NASA argue that the US cannot afford space exploration at this point. They use a pathos argument because they will point to kids in poverty or people starving and argue that the US needs to focus on them not space. This tugs on the heartstrings of compassionate citizens all across the United States. Doubling NASA’s budget requires money, which has to be allocated from somewhere, a drawback to the proposed solution. DeGroot (2012) wrote an article for Galegroup, in which he asked the question so what in response to China on path to put a man on Mars (DeGroot, 2012, p.1). He claims “The time has come to pull the plug on meaningless gestures in space”, stating that the missions are tremendously expensive (DeGroot, 2012, p.1). The argument is trying to make the point that NASA has no real benefit for what it does. This is a very common counter-argument that is presented daily. However, what these people fail to consider are the economic and inspirational benefits NASA provides that I have explained above. To respond to the point that the US cannot afford NASA, Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in an interview with Bill Maher that, all of NASA’s costs to this point are less than the bank bailout TARP (Nusca, 2011). TARP was an $850 billion bailout in 2008 signed by George Bush. Those funds used to bail out bankers, who made mistakes and purposely doomed people, has been greater than all the funds we have used for NASA. The issue with the argument that the US cannot afford NASA, is that they can