U.S. economic crisis blasts off, disregarding education
Parisa Amini
So the United States government wants to send a rocket to the moon.what about us back here on Earth?
The U.S. is in an “economic crisis” of serious proportions and yet we are funding NASA to, essentially, “blow-up” the moon.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, was a satellite sent towards the moon that carried a rocket to impact the moon in search of water.
NASA called this mission low-cost since it carried a price tag of $80 million.
Sure this is low considering their budget is in the billions, but that is millions of dollars more that could be spent on something more worthy, say…education.
This is only one program that our space administration is developing.
NASA is also working on a space program named Ares I. This program is meant to create rockets that could create human spaceflight missions.
On Oct. 28, 2009, NASA launched a rocket that was meant to test their Ares I.
The rocket flew for a total time of six minutes and NASA called the flight a success.
How much did that six minute rocket cost? $445 million.
I have a great idea, how about we just take a lighter to our wallets.
Unfortunately, this was only a test rocket. The estimated cost to develop the Ares I through 2015 has risen from a total of $28 billion in 2006 to more than $40 billion in 2009.
The money needs to be spent on digging America out of the economic crisis that people across the country are feeling.
Among those are Arizona schools. Earlier this year, the Arizona legislature cut funding to state universities by $142 million and nearly $133 million from K-12 education, too.
Arizona is 49th in the nation for per pupil education spending. Talk about ridiculous.
I understand that space exploration could define us in the future, but we should not be sacrificing quality education for our future generations.
Kids across the country rely on what we give them today, and a mediocre education is not acceptable.
