Future Tense

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why We Need To Double NASA’s Budget

The crew of Apollo 17 took this photograph of Earth in December 1972.

The crew of Apollo 17 took this photograph of Earth in December 1972.

Photo By Nasa/Getty Images

In a video with the bleak title “We Stopped Dreaming,” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the case for space exploration—and not just because it may help us find a new planetary home someday. “We went to the moon, and we discovered Earth,” he says, tying the famous photograph Earthrise to the birth of the environmental movement and even Doctors Without Borders—because, he says, it was the first time we saw the planet without “color-coded boundaries.”

The video promotes Penny4NASA, a campaign calling for NASA’s budget to be doubled to 1 percent of the U.S. budget. (It’s currently about 0.5 percent.)

Via Gizmodo.