NASA at 50

This week was NASA's 50th birthday. Actually it's been 50 years since President Eisenhower approved the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, but NASA didn't start operations until October 1, 1958. I'm sure there will be much bigger celebrations then.

This anniversary combined with Randy Pausch's death makes me consider what inspired me as a kid, particularly what inspired me to pursue the current course of my life. NASA as you can probably guess was a huge part of it. As a kid, I distinctly remember Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon as well as the Apollo 13 mission (although I must admit that my memories are probably augmented by the movie). As a scientist, I worked on several NASA grants for astronomy and Mission to Planet Earth. I'm still very inspired by NASA images and missions.

If I take a look back at the last 50 years (only some of which I've been alive for -- OK most), I think NASA's unmanned missions have been a spectacular success particularly for astronomy and Earth science. The manned missions have fallen on hard times in the last few decades due in part to two shuttle disasters, but also due to budget cuts. The budget cuts are unfortunate because I believe that NASA in the 60's and 70's led to a whole generation of scientists and engineers. That's good for the economy in the long run. Like the Olympics, NASA also inspired national pride -- we might not have put the first human in space, but we "won" the race to the moon. Senator and former astronaut John Glenn used to say that for every one dollar spent on the Apollo program, seven dollars were returned to the U.S. economy. Many of the advances in miniaturization, electronics, computing, and yes even food science (can you still buy Tang?) were driven by NASA and NASA contractors.

I only hope that the new Congress and the new Administration will fund NASA at levels which will continue to inspire future generations of Americans and particularly American engineers and scientists.