by Justin Vasel | Aug 17, 2012 | Current Events
Last week NASA successfully landed a car-sized rover on the planet Mars, 150 million miles away from Earth. If that weren’t impressive enough, they managed to land it with an error of less than 2 miles. This was no doubt the culmination of creative cleverness, remarkable engineering, and good ol’ fashioned, unwavering ambition. But there is another contributor that seldom gets the recognition it deserves: The policymakers in Washington D.C., and more indirectly, the citizens of the United States.In the maelstrom that is the current global economy, and during a time when national debts and deficits are ominously baring their teeth, we the public have decided that a mission to Mars is still important. Even with a price tag of $2.5 billion, we’re happy to bite the bullet and send that spacecraft on a one-way suicide mission for science. We know that it has value, that science advances technology, that grandiose projects like this inspire people to aim higher than ever before, that exploration and discovery are worthy of our attention and our investment.The tenets of discovery manifest themselves in projects like Curiosity, but they are born in policy. Public policy plays an important role in science these days. In July of last year, the appropriations committee in the United State House of Representatives planned to cut funding to the James Webb Space Telescope–Hubble’s successor. Many of you reading probably remember when this happened; it was very jarring for astronomers everywhere. There was substantial backlash from the international astronomical community and eventually, it was kept in the budget–for now. Not all projects are so lucky, though. The Laser Interferometer Space...
