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Here’s a recent speech by NASA head Michael D. Griffin about the space program and why we all pay an average of $0.15 per day in taxes supporting it. Why do we have NASA? Why study black holes and quasars? Why go to the moon and beyond? Here’s a pretty strong answer.

…if NASA were to disappear tomorrow, if the American space program were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up another Hubble, never put another human being in space, people would be profoundly distraught. Americans would feel less than themselves. They would feel that our best days are behind us. They would feel that we have lost something, something that matters. And yet they would not know why.

…the JFK quote about space that I love more than anything in the world, because it evokes exactly the things I’m talking about here tonight, was the one he gave from this lectern at Rice University in September of 1962, when he said “We choose to go to the moon, and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” I’ll say it again: “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

Go NASA! (And vote Obama.)

(Image from Rolf Wahl Olsen)