Boris:
Austria is a tiny country with an even more tiny budget, what we do is pay our share for the common programs in ESA, the European Space Agency - which, by the way, has not dropped development of any space exploration programs, AFAIK, and which is working on possibly creating its own human transportation system as well - and ESA was ready to help on the - always planned as such - international efforts to get moon and mars missions forward.
What I'm talking about isn't money though, it's vision, it's inspiring people, including students, to work with science and to gather hope from the prospect of great milestones to be achieved.
It's all about marketing and messaging, and until this week, I thought that was something that president was able to manage. Stupid me to think that.
And why do I care, even if I'm Austrian? First, because I believe that USA is - possibly together with Austria - the greatest country in the world. Second, because I care about mankind, and the US and NASA have been leading mankind to new worlds and new exploration for decades. To make it short, I believe in NASA. Actually, a getting job there would probably even make me throw away all the work I'm doing with Mozilla. Not that I tried, so don't fear to lose me - yet.
03.02.2010 19:24