Anti-Space Mom with Pro-Space Kids

Please consider that you should be thanking your lucky stars that your children have such strong, positive interests. Please do what you can to encourage them. As to sinkholes, think about the technology that you use every day.

From the end of the article: " Maybe he'll be a rebel astronomer, and someday reform NASA, or call for an end to manned space missions so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream."

Hmm. Or maybe they could grow up to give you a lesson in order-of-magnitude mathematics? Or, the connection between our modern, high-quality lifestyle and the underlying science and exploration?

Sorry, lady, but NASA's $18 billion if redirected would have virtually NO effect on saving Social Security-or anything else, while laying off, oh I'd guess 100,000 jobs.

How about eliminating NASA so that we can pay off the national debt. It would only take about a thousand years!!!!!

Marcel F. Williams

The money for Apollo returned more than six times. Everyone would be happy about such a success. Perhaps the next generation can repeat it.

Well, if she at least feigns interest so her kids continue to feel encourages, I can support that. Far too many parents don't encourage any kind of science in their children's lives, or worse, actively discourage it. This has been a century of television for most Americans, rather than a century of learning. We are certainly better of than where we were, but I fear we are falling back into a pit of darkness as far as education goes.

There are three separate issues here:

(1) A general disinterest in the Natural World around you. This is similar to a lack of interest in sports or any other general topic, but is sad since there is so much to enjoy in observing and understanding the natural world. Also, how would you be able to read about other people's marriages without all of the knowledge that science and technology have squeezed out of Nature by studying it. Think of a world with no printed books. Your children might have already died in infancy due to some formerly common disease if not for medical advances based originally on studies of nature. I am not interested in sports, but I do not condem sports or those who are interested in them.

(2) A disaproval of your children's interests seems very counterproductive. Would you rather your children joined gangs, read tabloids, or were just bullies with no real interests, goals or motivations. You are now doing the right thing in supporting their interests.

(3) disaproval of the space program itself. You are not interested enough in it to realize that it is important. (Think for a moment how many other important things are you NOT interested in). (Of course, no one person has the time to follow all important topics.)

If we want to continue to live in comfort and safetly, space is becoming increasingly important. I presume you would not have been interested in stories of the pioneers who explored wild areas that later became tame subdivisions and neighborhoods.

Where do you think the money to support welfare and medicare, etc comes from. It does not grow on trees. It comes from hard work. Without raw materials and energy, there would be no business and no tax money to help the poor.

Space will eventually give us both a clean energy supply and a source of rare and expensive raw materials. Without energy, your children cannot be carried to class on a school bus, the classrooms could not be heated and lighted, and they would have no schoolbooks.

This is not an endorsement of the US Government's "Space Program" as it has been executed in the last 35 years, but a general endorsment of the idea that Mankind must sail on the wider sea of space and engage in profit-making business there we are to survive in the long term.

John, you are spot on!

It genuinely seems that, to the majority, we are still living on a world in the centre of the universe that is nothing more than a glass bowl studded with innumerable rotating around us. To many people, it seems that anything that expands the horizons of the world, or forces them to think too clearly on the scale of the universe, is not only unwelcome but distinctly and personally threatening. People don't like hearing that the world goes on beyond the horizon of their day-to-day lives.

The thought that science and engineering - building new things and learning new things that will ultimately benefit us as a species - is less important than, say, making yet another foredoomed attempt to eliminate poverty by throwing money at people is somewhat depressing. Unfortunately, it is the majority opinion of this world and, both directly and indirectly, has led us to where we are now.

Much as we may fulminate here, it won't do us much good, at least in terms of reaching her. I went over to Slate & posted my thoughts there.

The column is pretty appalling, but there's some encouragement in the fact that the comments following it on Slate mostly make the points being made here.

In addition to her generally clueless attitude toward space and astronomy, her difficulty in supporting her kids avid and constructive interests is pretty disappointing. I always encouraged my daughter's positive interests when she was growing up. She loved writing, singing, science, and art. Today she's a Ph.D. student at a top university doing scientific research.

After seeming to flaunt her ignorance and disinterest in the world beyond her immediate concerns and about the relative amount of money spent on space and astronomy, at least the author of the piece makes a reluctant effort to support her kids in the end.