If you'd like to help, please join us! You can join our Cause at Facebook: Space Advocates to Obama on Facebook
If you're on NASAspaceflight.com, please add to the discussion.
You can also feel free to take this draft letter below (adapted from the original e-mail I sent his campaign) and add your own name. Please add your own thoughts and concerns, so long as done respectfully. The more letters we can get to his campaign that show space exploration is valued in America, the better.
Dear Senator Obama,
I am writing to you today on behalf of the thousands of scientists, engineers, researchers, and support personnel in America's space program and the countless more enthusiasts who support sustained human space exploration. You announced that it is your intention to delay the Constellation Program for at least five years and divert the funds to an education program if elected President. Senator, I honestly do not understand the logic in pitting space exploration and education against each other. In my experience, both are equally important and both are vital to our nation's future. Congress has traditionally agreed with that view and kept funding for NASA and education separate to avoid hampering the efforts of both.
As a member of our nation's Senate, you must also know that NASA only receives seven-tenths of a percent of the federal discretionary budget. On the other hand, the Department of Education receives approximately five times that. At the federal level alone, we already spend significantly more on education than space exploration. When state and local expenditures are included, there simply is no comparison. If the funds for your education initiative are needed so badly, why not instead focus on reducing the tremendous overhead costs in the American education system? Despite spending nearly as much per capita on education, our friends in Europe succeed in getting, in some cases, nearly twice as much actual funding to the students and teachers. Surely we can realize more effective change in education by better spending the money that is already there than stripping funds from a politically visible, but relatively small program in terms of discretionary spending.
We must also keep in mind that space exploration has been vital to understanding both our place in the universe and our place here on Earth. The pursuit of knowledge is a noble and just calling and goes hand-in-hand with education. It has been NASA scientists and satellites that played an unparalleled role in figuring out how the world's climate is changing as a result of human pollution. It has been NASA-funded research that led to breakthroughs in medical imaging and materials science, just to name a few. NASA cosmologists and satellites have been and still are unlocking some of the secrets that will help us understand the very nature of the universe itself. The cordless power tool industry is directly traced back to the Apollo program. We can only begin to imagine what new technologies will be developed and fundamental science will be learned as we establish a permanent presence on the Moon, much like we have established scientific research stations on Antarctica.
Will you reconsider your position on the Constellation Program, or at least offer your own proposal for sustained human and robotic exploration of the Solar System? If not, can you explain how you reconcile your stated support for science, technology, and engineering innovation and getting more American students interested in those fields with advocating a policy that will lead to at least a ten-year gap in which the United States will not have the ability to send humans into space? Do you believe that space exploration is a worthwhile endeavor, as I do, and will you give it the support that is deserved?
Best regards,
-----
His campaign's mailing address is:
Obama for America
P.O. Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680
No comments:
Post a Comment