"Congress is breaking my heart!"

[medeak]

rarely receive emails from busy math whiz son...so know it's important when I do! Please forward to your friends:

Have you heard about the James Webb Space Telescope? It's pretty much the most awesome thing humans are building at the moment. Don't believe me? Let my friend Hank Green explain why. This telescope is the only thing that could console me after i heard the Hubble was being decommissioned and it's my last sliver of hope that something of the America that does things "not because they were easy, but because they are hard" still exists.

Last week it's massive mirrors were finished being polished, which is the most delicate step in the process. Over all it's halfway done, having 3 billion of it's projected 6.5 billion dollar cost spent. And this morning I found out it's on the Republican's chopping block. They'd kill it now, waste all the money we've spent on it so far, and leave the scientific breakthroughs to other countries where all of our best scientists happen to be going.

This is a trend. I'm sure most of you have heard about Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the greatest atom smasher in the history of atom smashers. Well we had a project called the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) that was canceled in the 90's. It would have been over three times the size of the LHC and would have been finished ten to fifteen years earlier. Keep in mind that when it comes to atom smashers bigger is largely better. We could have already uncovered the scientific breakthroughs the LHC hopes to make and would have attracted the world's best and brightest to our shores. But we didn't, Congress canceled it halfway through. And now Europe's doing it instead.

Science is one of the pillars our country's dwindling dominance was built on. We led the industrial revolution, split the atom, and went to the moon. None of these things were cheap, and none of the new science will be cheap, but it's worth it. Doing these big projects creates jobs, invents new technologies, attracts the best minds in the world, inspires the youth, and enriches us all. It's worth the money and compaired to what we spend on defense it's peanuts. Please contact your Representative. It takes a couple of minutes, all you need to say is "don't cut the James Webb Space Telescope's funding" or something similar. While you're at it give your Senators a heads up in case it passes the house. The suits need to know that people care about this.

Thank you all!

[sudopod]

1. this is just terrible. :/ nt

[northoftheborder]

2. Surely the Senate can get it back into the budget.

This is very depressing news. Yes I remember about the Super Collider. It was just north of Austin around Waco; they had already purchased all the land to begin, and were actually starting on it, I think, and it just died, or rather was killed by the conservative anti-science, anti-spend bunch. No one seemed to be able to fight for it, didn't understand the importance of the science. I remember a friend who is a physicist here was very disturbed that it was stopped. But he couldn't explain to non-scientists why it was important. It's difficult to explain research to people. Not as dramatic as the space program.

This telescope is very important, and so much has been spent on it already; it has to be finished. Wonder how my Repub. Rep. voted on it. Have to find out. Was it just taken out in committee, or voted on the floor?

[medeak]

5. passed committee and now going to floor

thank you for your comment...it's so sad

[medeak]

3. "5 awesome things about Webb telescope"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihpNNBmJypE

[lunatica]

4. Science and research are doing just fine at UC Berkeley

As many of you know UC Berkeley is one of the best research universities in the world. Scientists there get grants from the government and gifts from corporations and they're doing just fine. Scientific research isn't drying up in this country.

[medeak]

6. 2000 jobs ended with termination

here is Senator Mikulski's statement:

http://mikulski.senate.gov/media/pressrelease/7-7-2011-1.cfm