It's not a fringe issue when you have many family members who work for NASA and JSC. My brother spends every day writing code for the Orion spacecraft that is a part or the Constellation program. His wife is due with a kid in the spring. I will vote Republican if I have to in order to save space exploration. throwing money at education accomplishes nothing. So much money is wasted as it is. If they took some money from NASA to start a program to tell people to quit having kids they cant afford, that might be something I could support.
so if you stop throwing money at education, where will the next group of space engineers come from? BTW would your brother's family fall under having kids they can't afford if Obama "destorys manned space flight?" since I'm assuming that everyone's job at NASA would be affected somehow
Colleges are not empty. NASA is doing fine without billions of dollars thrown at education. It won't change a single thing. Both my mother and wife have taught high school for many years. They have seen the waste of many first hand. A lot of the kids don't want to learn. Money won't solve that.
well yes but where do the college kids come from? Far as I know, we're not in a Galactaca society where your intelligence is determined by your DNA before you're even born.
that's the definition of a fringe issue, you're the only people who would decide your vote on this. That's fine, that's your right, but its a fringe issue. what does people "having kids they can't afford" have to do with this? better schools is an issue, regardless of the kids in them. some of our schools are falling apart
The schools that are falling a part are the ones filled with kids that should never have been born in the first place.
oooh man that's not gonna go over too well. I'm not awake enough to go into the racial undertones of this one
it sure speaks highly of the people who support nasa. you got obssessive astronauts driving to florida in diapers, and grown men insulting kids on a web site.
WTF? As someone who used to teach kids in said schools made up of kids that shouldn't been born, that's ****ing offensive as hell. Seriously stop now before you dig an even bigger hole.
More than one astronaut drove to Florida in diapers? More than one person on this message board insulted kids in this thread?
it sure speaks highly of the people who support nasa. you got obssessive astronauts driving to florida in diapers, grown men insulting kids on a web site, and other guys who go ballistic over grammar errors i keed i keed
So they should suffer with bad education because their parents made a bad decision and because your family works for NASA? I don't understand making a decision about who you vote for President over one issue that in the grand scheme of our country is not that important. I'm not saying that this would happen, but what if Obama has a fantastic plan for many of our country's issues. Social Security, Health Care, Education, The War in Iraq, The Economy, etc. etc. etc. but to make all of those work, we have to give up a manned spaceflight for 5 years. I'm sorry but that seems like a no brainer for me. I'd vote for that even if I was the man manning the freaking space flight. I'd think that the good of the entire country would come first.
Weren't you just participating in a thread in which you were arguing (rightfully so) that (for example) Al Sharpton doesn't necessarily speak for all blacks? In this same vein the "diapered astronaut" and Mr. Meowgi certainly don't necessarily represent or speak for NASA. There are thousands and thousands of folks whose lives will be affected if NASA shuts down or if a major project gets cancelled/delayed. The city of Houston and surrounding area will be dealt a blow as well.
the diapered astronaut isn't the only blemish on NASA in the past 5 years. edit: but I do understand your point
I have other issues with Obama, who I was very high on early, but this isn't a fringe issue to me. I wouldn't argue the case like MR. MEOWGI is, but I'll say that what is a "fringe issue" depends entirely on your point of view. I've been a supporter of manned space flight all my life, before we ever got a man into space. We simply have to expand humanity from this planet to preserve the species. If a planet killer asteroid or comet were headed our way, there currently isn't a damn thing in place to do anything about it. We need to explore where we are and find what's out there. The technologies being developed to do that have led to countless technological innovations we take for granted today. I could go on at length, but I'll spare everyone the agony. Just a note... my father was in a national magazine, which embarrassed him a great deal, for detecting the signal from Sputnik in his lab at a major Houston university. It was a sensational piece that made far more of it than was deserved. It illustrates how freaked out we were as a nation that we'd fallen behind the Soviets getting into space. Not just the populace, but heavy hitters inside the government and the military were simply freaking out. Want an idea of what it was like? Read Tom Wolfe's, The Right Stuff. (or see the flick... it's excellent) Do we want to be placed in the position of reading about the Chinese space program doing the things being bandied about here, or the European Union, or Japan, and wonder where we went off track, when we had a great lead in this technology? There are many, many reasons to continue manned space flight. Saying that we must chose between education and the space program is ludicrous. They should be joined at the hip. D&D. Attempt Sanity. Impeach Bush for Creating Idiots.
I don't understand why we can't just take the money from social security like everyone else has been doing.
I already stated that I would be happy to take money to support a program to educate people not to have kids if the can not completely afford to do so. I would also support tax breaks for those who decide not to have children (not the other way around). That would go a lot further than throwing money at kids whose parents never could, and the "education crisis". What we have is a baby making crisis.
