At the end of the speech, Tyson asked the Senate committee to double NASA’s budget from a half-cent on every tax dollar collected to a full penny. Such an increase would raise NASA’s budget from less than $18 billion to a healthy $37.5 billion. I listened to the
entire original address, which was about nine minutes long, and agreed with all of it. At the same time I was kind of frustrated because I didn’t think the majority of people would treat it as something beyond a frivolous expense that, with our current level of debt, we could do without.
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