Monday, September 26, 2022

Life is Hard But NASA Will Save US

In Jackson Mississippi this is what drinking water looks like. Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

9-26-22


One thing that is so important about living in a free society and country is that we get to choose how our government spends the money that the we fork over to it in order to run things right. It’s called democracy for a reason. It’s “for the people by the people” not like in China.

 

I missed a couple of important votes recently like the one to spend a few billion in Ukraine rather than trying to keep the peace and this other one that I should have really voted on. I even watched for the consequences of it today in case I got to see the explosion.

 

I am talking about NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission that sent an unmanned spacecraft in to space to hit a 500-pound rock at 14,000 MPH and see if it could change its course. This rock, an asteroid officially, was no threat to the Earth but we have to be prepared no?

I am sure the meeting about spending the $325 million was posted and I just missed it. Even though they are zooms now it’s still a democratic way of doing things and it’s my fault I wasn’t there to have my vote counted.

 

I am sat here on my porch hoping to see something in the heavens but the smog and smoke from the fires that are destroying my state and its wildlife aren’t helping.

 

I wondered for a fleeting moment if spending $325 million on hitting this rock some hundreds of millions of miles away was worth it. But I was comforted by the report I read that informed me that the money was well spent as it, ”one day might protect Earth from as catastrophic asteroid impact.”

 

NASA, stresses that “planetary defense remains a focus of the agency.”

 

I have talked to a lot of working class people, home owners, tenants, the homeless, small community business', residents of Jackson Mississippi and Flint Michigan, peasants in Brazil, factory workers in Bangladesh that have some problems of their own but they all agree, asteroid deflection is the top of their list when it comes to protecting us all.

 


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