Bad Astronomy Blog » Neil Tyson on exploring space

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Bad Astronomy Blog » Neil Tyson on exploring space
Astronomer Neil Tyson wrote a pretty good article for Parade magazine this week about why we explore space. He hits a lot of the right points, and he says something that I wind up hammering when I give public talks as well:

How many times have we heard the mantra: “Why are we spending billions of dollars up there in space when we have pressing problems down here on Earth?” Let’s re-ask the question in an illuminating way: “What is the total cost in taxes of all spaceborne telescopes, planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the space station and shuttle, telescopes yet to orbit and missions yet to fly?” Answer: less than 1% on the tax dollar—7/10ths of a penny, to be exact.

[…]

So, with 99 out of 100 cents going to fund the rest of our nation’s priorities, the space program is not now (nor has it ever really been) in anybody’s way.

The short version: space exploration costs us very little. Need I remind you that we are basically setting fire to $11,000,000 per hour in Iraq? When I talk on this topic, I make an analogy: when your disk drive is full, do you go through and take hours to delete thousands of small text files, or do you delete that one big 3 Gb video file you never watch? NASA is a text file on the hard drive of the government.

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Spot on. And people never stop to think that the money is ALL spent right here on earth and almost all of it is spent in the United States. Jobs, factories, services…..

Variety.com - Movie Supergirl to appear on Smallville

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Variety.com - Helen Slater
Former “Supergirl” star Helen Slater has signed on to appear on the CW’s reworking of the Superman saga. Slater will play the aunt of “Smallville’s” recently cast Supergirl (Laura Vandervoort). Slater will appear in the sixth episode of the upcoming season, two weeks after ex-Superman Dean Cain (”Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”) is scheduled to appear. Slater has recently done guest gigs on “Crossing Jordan,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine.”

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This rocks. And as bad as the movie was I still enjoyed it. She’s always been my favorite superhero.
Also - If she is Kara’s aunt that would mean she is playing Lara, Kal-el’s mother! Awesome!