NASA and the deficit

Ok, believe it or not, I'm starting this because today was the last manned flight from NASA. I sat and watched it take off on the TV, and it blew my mind. This hit me surprisingly hard, I'm afraid, largely due to my dad.

I was 3 weeks old when the mission to the moon took off, and I heard the stories 1000 times of how my dad sat me up in his lap and explained all about the rocket phases, etc. He was born in 1916, old when I was born, and he was amazed and a little obsessed with the space program. It touched a sense of wonder in him few things do, which is saying something given he was a hard as nails, no nonsense child of the Depression. In kindergarten I knew more about space and the missions than my teacher, and until the day he died he dreamed of someday watching a launch live, and we'd sit under the stars and look at constellations while we talked about all the possibilities and wonders represented. He told me how if I worked hard I could be an astronaut someday.

To him the space program represented the best of mankind and the US, that we could do anything and be anything. He never got to see a mission in person. He died in 1993, of heart failure, after fighting lung cancer and heart disease for years. He was 80 years old, and so sick, but refused the hospital, preferring to live with the ass, me, and my daughter, his little partner in crime. He told her the same things, since to him that was the ultimate dream- to go into space. His dream seems to have been killed today, and I can't help but wonder how many others did as well.

Last month 200,000 were unemployed, and we had a total of 14.1 million out of work. The government may be out of money by August 2, if they don't come up with an answer. Social Security and Military checks might not be sent out. The military puts their lives on the line to protect and serve, especially since our brilliant government has seen fit to fight wars on more fronts then I can keep track of anymore, and without those checks their families are screwed. Now how good is that for a man or woman in combat, to have to worry about how your kids are going to eat? And the SS keeps our elderly and disabled running, but speaking from personal experience where's no wiggle room for "oops, we forgot to do the math" from the government. Some of us rely on those to make it, not because we're lazy, or fat, or just won't work, but because we paid in for the years we could, and now have to use it to get by. Now if you or I had gotten as stupid with the spending as our current administration, we'd have gotten a big legal smackdown. I can't help big wish they'd get the same.