A NEW PERSPECTIVE
by: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist / director of Hayden Planetarium
Space is a three-hundred billion dollar industry worldwide. NASA is actually a tiny percent of that. It's interesting how small a percent NASA is to the total world spending of space. That little bit, however, is what inspires dreams. Every corporation in here with representatives to this conference, if you ever even touched a science mission, you would lead off with that in your quarterly reports, in your annual reports, because it inspires. It is the act of discovery that empowers nations in the world to undertake these activities. We know this.
Apollo 8, that was the first time anybody ever left Earth with a destination in mind. Yeah, it figurated around the Moon. The photo of Earth rising over the lunar landscape, we all know it--Earthrise over the Moon. There was Earth, seen not as the map-maker would have you identify it. No, the countries were not color-coded with bounderies. It was seen as nature intended it to be viewed--oceans, lands, clouds. We went to the Moon, and we discovered Earth. I claim we discovered Earth for the first time.
Photo by NASA
How does that affect culture? I got a list. The instant that photo comes out, that is the identifying cover picture of the whole Earth catalogue, thinking about Earth as a whole. Not as a place where nations war, [but] as a whole. 1970 the comprehensive clean air act is passed. Earth day was birth on March 1970. The environmental protection agency was founded in 1970. The organization "Doctors without Boarders" was founded in 1971. Where do you even get that phrase from? No one thought of that phrase before that photo was published. Because every globe in your classroom has countries painted on it. DDT gets banned in 1972, we're still going to the Moon, we're still looking back to Earth. Clean water act 1971. 1972 endangered species act. The catalytic converter gets put-in in 1973, unleaded gas 1973, we're still at war in Vietnam! There's still campus unrest. Yet we found the time to start thinking about Earth. That is space operating on our culture and you cannot even put a price on that.
That is a nation, that is a world, reacting to a new perspective on what it is to be alive on this planet that we all share. We need to look at NASA, not as a handout, but as an investment. Because as goes the health of space varying ambitions, so too goes the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, the creative, and the economic ambitions of a nation. So goes the future of America [so goes the future of the world].
