Bah, politics

The reason why I may be voting Republican this year, if the primary doesn't turn out well for Clinton: Obama wants me to lose my job. He's obviously timed this announcement well, most of the states with large space programs have already had their primaries, and many of the remaining states aren't doing so hot in the education department.

Some numbers provided by Ben:
States remaining to be decided in democratic primaries: Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina
Discredited States: Florida, Michigan

States with NASA Centers: California, Virginia, Ohio, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico

Rank of expenditures per student for states left in democratic
primaries:
Oregon: #28
Montana: #26
South Dakota: #35
Indiana: #22
Pennsylvania: #21
West Virginia: #15
Kentucky: #30
North Carolina: #41

School Teacher Salary Rank:
Oregon: #14
Montana: #46
South Dakota: #51
Indiana: #17
Pennsylvania: #10
West Virginia: #42
Kentucky: #34
North Carolina: #24

Only one of the states remaining has a NASA Center. The majority of the remaining states are in the bottom half of salary and expenditures per student.

It is very rare for NASA to compete with education for money, because they're separate issues, both of which deserve a lot more money than they ever get. But his plan would put us without human spaceflight capability for almost 10 years! Not to mention how many thousands of NASA employees and contractors will be laid off in the states that had their primaries before he came out with this plan, and it's not like there's that much commercial spaceflight going on yet to pick up the slack.

People, we will never have colonies on the moon if all of our engineers die of old age before we get around to going back, and everyone knows it won't be the future until we have moon colonies. Apparently Obama just doesn't want it to be the future. I guess we shouldn't even bother asking him for funding for flying cars or hoverboards.

Voyager 2

With all the budget cuts and general bureaucracy involved in working for the government, it constantly amazes me that people manage to get anything done. But they do amazing things! We're still getting fascinating new information from Voyagers 1 and 2 , spacecraft we launched 30 years ago! Voyager 1 is now over 14 light-hours from us, that's 9.6 billion miles. Humans created something that now exists at a distance which we could not have conceived of 200 years ago.

Everything we've ever known, all the animals, the plants, all the people you've ever met, all of history, every idea any human has ever had has happened here, on or within a few light-seconds of this tiny little blue speck whirling around a tiny little glowing dot. But somehow we managed to work together to create something that exists impossibly far away! And still works! Still sends back data, still changes our views of the universe.

Someone told me recently that they felt there are very few real surprises in life. I can't agree with that. I'm surprised every time I wake up, every time I walk out my front door, that I exist, that the universe exists and that we as part of it can observe it, and have the courage to think that maybe we can understand it, that we are capable of understanding it.

We are capable of wonders matched only by our capability for atrocities. That surprises me every day.