As evidence of our impending doom, I give you the US House of Representatives.

You’re welcome.

First, remote sensing has come a long way since I worked with Landsat, and Thematic Mapper data in the 80s.

Second, the Earth is a living organism, as is the Milky Way. But it breathes at a time scale much more accessible to our understanding.

Third, all those wonderful space platforms that can gather this data so vital to our knowledge and even our survival are there only because NASA and a handful of other space agencies in other countries have felt it worthwhile to put them up. No one profitted or benefitted directly or financially from this technology, at least in the short term. This is our Pyramids, our Parthenon, our Great Wall.

Communications and navigation satellites have a direct commercial feedback and immediate practical benefits, but earth observation satellites, orbiting observatories, and planetary probes are only there because we as nations, as a civilization have felt it needed to be done. Only governments can do this.

If, as the show’s final comments imply, we allow these projects to be abandoned because we feel they are not paying for themselves, that the modest investments we make in them are unsustainable, that they have no immediate practical benefit, I fear we are finished as a species. Its not that we will die, its that we will no longer deserve to live.