I Love This Fucker

Neil deGrasse Tyson has become NASA's go-to guy on tv - he's on Colbert, he's got his PBS show, he's all over the History Channel, he'll probably show up at your Rotary Club meeting if you want him. He makes talking about astrophysics kinda fun - he's the Sinbad of space. And what he says here is exactly right - NASA need to shoot higher. We've kinda been treading water doing the same shit over and over for a while now; hell, every passing year makes it even that much more amazing we went to the moon when we did. NASA owns man's greatest engineering and technological feats, and nobody really gives a shit anymore. Probably because we don't have any specific group of cool dudes to look towards, like we did with the original astronauts.

One thing NASA has to do is lay down the gauntlet and say "we're doing this, and we're doing it NOW!" Go to Mars, land on an asteroid, whatever.

I don't know how much I remember of whatever CPR I first learned about 20 years ago, but one thing that always stuck in my head is that you never say "somebody call 911!" If you do that, everyone stands around assuming someone else will. You hafta look at someone and say "YOU call 911!"

That's what I think of whenever I think of how astounding JFK's challenge to NASA was back in 1961. He didn't say "gee, let's try to land on the moon asap." He said we're landing on the goddam moon...and then he gave a fucking date!!!!  Sure it led to some mistakes along the way due to trying meet deadlines, but it lit as fire under everyone's ass and the shit actually happened.

Pick a challenge.
Say when we're meeting this challenge.
Put a face or faces on that challenge.
Watch people rally around it (if we can get 40M people a week delirious once a week about seeing a bunch of teenagers play karaoke to some British dude, seems like we can do this, no?)
Allow all the scientific run-off to let us catch up to the rest of the world, e.g. fast trains etc. Remember, the Apollo program didn't just give us Tang, it gave us velcro and fire-resistant materials (see more HERE.)

Throw in a big re-release of REO Speedwagon's Time for Me to Fly? Yes? No? Okay.