A Letter

I wrote this letter to my senator the other night (I looked up the facts, not lying!). Enjoy!:

Sep 1, 2009

Senator Amy Klobuchar
Hart Senate Office Building, Room 302
Constitution Avenue and 2nd Street, NE
Washington, DC 20510-2307

Dear Senator Klobuchar,

My name is Rick Hanton, and I am a student from Minnesota currently attending college and majoring in Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. My mother also thought I might mention that her father and your father hiked in Kenya together years ago (she is Carrie Hefte, daughter of Judge Richard Hefte), which is kind of cool. Anyhow, I am writing to you to give a short opinion of my views on a few topics of great importance to me.

Of the many things important to me as a constituent, there are currently two things that I care about most of all that need changing. The more important one is space travel and the future of NASA and the second different though related thing is the country's continuing reliance on the U.S. Customary system of measurement (rather than 98% of countries in the world using metric). I note that things like science don't have enough weight to get a place on the “issues” part of your website, but I hope you will still read this letter.

On the issue of NASA, I feel that NASA is highly undervalued by the legislators of this country as well as by the vast majority of its residents. We would not now have all kinds of things like braces, cell networks, smoke detectors, and water filters if it was not for NASA's work over the years. And, this is while they have consumed an average of 1.23% of the national budget per year for the last 52 years (note: consumption for the last 16 years has averaged 0.74% and is currently around 0.55% this year). In the world of economics, I would consider this a phenomenal Return on Investment (considering the amount of U.S. business currently centered on technical businesses that rely on these advances). It would be an interesting study to look at how much of the current U.S. GDP is based on technologies advanced by NASA (I am minoring in economics).

The president is currently studying possible futures for NASA and our space program. This is possibly one of the most important times in the program's history alongside events like President Kennedy's iconic speech in 1961, the decision to create a space shuttle in the late 1960s, and the decision to collaborate with others (mainly the Russians) on the International Space Station in 1992. If we do not ask NASA to take a course of future action that is scientifically challenging and exciting for the average citizen, AND provide extra funding to at least move them more quickly to a new launch vehicle in the next 5 to 10 years, they will be stuck back in the same nearly useless condition they have been in since the 1970s. But, it's not like they didn't get anything done. They have done amazing things since then with their miniscule budget.

Sorry to belabor the point, but back in the glory days of NASA (1960s), they were able to use 5.5% of the total national budget (5.5% much > 0.55%). In terms of dollars, NASA was able to use its budget of approximately $33.5 billion in today's dollars in 1965 almost solely to build moon rockets, while today NASA is trying to get to the moon (per Bush's instructions) on a small fraction of their $17.8 billion budget (17% or about $3 billion per year to be precise). NASA has constantly been asked to do more with less, which simply isn't fair to the brilliant engineers and scientists that work there. This is not even mentioning that NASA has become far more politically bureaucratic in the last 50 years as well.

My point here is that NASA needs more consistent support from the U.S. Government. Other countries are catching up. Asia is basically in a small space race at the moment, with Japan, China, Korea, and India all vying to become new powers in space. I won't even mention here a large discussion of why this is profitable for these other countries at the moment (note: it's a thing called ITAR that started preventing U.S. companies from launching foreign satellites when it moved from the department of commerce to state about a decade ago). But, suffice to say that if we do not fund developments in space exploration, we will no longer be the go-to country for space exploration. If you have any chances to help make our future in space a reality, please take them. The problem with most Americans is that they are not willing to devote funding to research or to worry about global catastrophes that could kill our planet and species if we do not become an inter-planetary species. I hope that our senators are able to think a bit longer term than the next 1 year (or the next 6 years) and provide NASA with the funding and direction they need.

Secondary to this, and possibly more interesting, is the fact that sooner or later the United States will convert to metric units. We (engineers like me) are burdened by the fact that we don't use the same measurement system as other countries. In a world that becomes smaller every day, this is one more thing that causes problems for U.S. citizens and causes resentment for U.S. citizens from the rest of the world. The customary unit system is not generally logical and is harder to calculate with. This would be a huge change for the country, but when 98% of the world uses another system, it is bound to change here sooner or later. I think it would be better sooner than later. It would help our country's bottom line at least if we don't manage to lose many more $125 million dollar assets (I'm referring to the Mars Climate Orbiter here) due to measurement conversion miscalculations. Just a thought there. Make it a priority if you really want to make a big difference.

Sincerely,

Mr. Richard Hanton