To Seeing What's Out There
There are so many logical reasons why one should support space exploration, and justify the expense. But these reasons are not why I support space exploration. I support space exploration because it's just fascinating . I’m not yet a computer scientist, so I don’t get to call myself a scientist according to many. But I share with them an inherent need to understand the world around me, and to see with my eyes the structures underpinning our existence. There's a kind of awe I get when I read a beautiful algorithm that I also get when I understand what the CMBR is, and how it got there. And even if I didn't understand any of the science, there's a different kind of awe, a more primal and fundamental numinous, that comes from seeing a picture of the surface of Titan sent back by Huygens, or cloud tops of Jupiter seen from just above their surface. A kind of awe I would gladly pay a few dollars for - which, as one of 300 million Americans, is precisely what it costs me...