For the past couple of generations, NASA has been a big part of everyone’s lives. Whether it was the first man to go to the moon, or building a space craft, NASA has had historic importance. Though now, NASA federal spending has received serious budget cuts. What NASA does exactly is to operate space machinery, but mostly to look out into space and explore. NASA spends 9.982 billion dollars out of government spending each year. In the spectrum of things this number is not very large. The Air Force spends about 15 billion dollars a year, and that includes weapons and things like that. Why is such an important organization, an essential part of American History being dramatically cut short while cuts to there are no cuts to military spending? Others would argue, why do we spend anything on NASA at all? Unfortunately the opinions of congress are what really matters, and their option is, why spend more money on what’s out there, instead of what is already here?

Mr. Kotala from Middletown High School North explains, “They (the government) should still fund NASA because there is still so much to learn about space and maybe if we keep funding we can find out about other planets that might be livable.” NASA is now a mostly privately run project where private companies can fund them. The government still gives the money, but not enough to expand their knowledge.
NASA TV

Many different shows and movies after NASA was funded came out that showed different ideas about the future and how it was going to look. It is shown in the past that NASA had an effect on the people whether it was positive or negative. Space movies, like Star Trek, came out that showed of a future nobody could possibly dream of. Some scientists even say that the ideas for new cell phones, such as I-Phones, were created through the original ideas of phones in Star Trek and other space movies. Mrs. Kotala, a Middletown resident growing up when these movies were popular says “I loved space movies because it got me thinking about the future and what was to come. It made me excited.”