Neil deGrasse Tyson -- We Stopped Dreaming

[DreamGypsy]

4. Here's a partial transcript for Episode 2...

from here:

(NB: I didn't replay the video to verify accuracy or completeness of the transcript, but it's clearly a pretty good attempt at recreating NDGT's message. I made one obvious correction - at the end of the third paragraph I changed "There's still campus on rest." to "There's still campus unrest.")

Space. Three hundred billion dollar industry worldwide. NASA is actually a tiny percentage of that. Interesting. How small a percent NASA is to the total world spending of space. That little bit, however, is what inspires dreams. Every corporation in here with representatives to this conference: If you ever even touched a science mission, you'd lead off with that in your quarterly reports -- annual reports.

Because, it inspires, it is the act of discovery that empowers nations in the world to undertake this activities. We know this. Apollo 8. That was the FIRST TIME anybody ever LEFT Earth! With a destination in mind. Yeah, figure-eighted around the moon. Photo. Of Earth. Rising over the lunar landscape. Earthrise over the moon. There was Earth. Seen not as the mapmaker would have you identify it. No. The countries were not color coded. With boundaries. It was seen as nature intended it to be viewed. Oceans. Land. Clouds.

We went to the moon and we discovered Earth! I claim we discovered Earth. For the first time. How does that affect culture? I got a list! The instance that photo comes out, that is the identifying cover picture of the whole Earth catalog. Thinking of Earth as a whole. Not as a place where nations war. As a whole. 1970. The comprehensive Clean Air Act. Earth Day was birthed, March 1970. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970. The organization Doctors Without Borders was founded in 1971. Where do you even get that phrase from!? No one thought of that phrase before that photo was published. Because every globe in your classroom has countries painted on it. DDT gets banned in 1972. We're still going to the moon; we're still looking back to Earth. Clean Water Act, 1971. 1972, Endangered Species Act. The catalytic converter gets put in, in 1973. Unleaded gas, 1973. We're still at war in Vietnam! There's still campus unrest. Yet, we found the time to start thinking about Earth.

That is space, operating on our culture and you cannot even put a price on that. That is-- that is, a nation, that is a world, we're acting to a new perspective on what it is to be alive, on this planet we all share. We need to look at NASA not as a hand-out, but as an investment. Because, as goes, the health of space varying ambitions, so to goes the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, the creative and the economic ambitions of a nation. So goes the future of America.

Neil is, as usual, completely captures the situation and presents it with passion and eloquence. There obviously have been other 'big science' projects: the Manhattan Project for example, or the Humane Genome, various particle physics programs (SLAC, Battavia, etc.) ... but for my generation (or at least for me...a bit audacious to claim to speak for a whole generation ) growing up in the late 50's and 60's the space program was truly inspirational.

Thanks very much for posting these videos, LTH.