Letters to the Editor

By Staff Editorial     9/24/09 7:00pm

Specific signals required for bikers

To the Editor:For pedestrians, bells, whistles and random shouting seem random and not especially effectual ("New bike policy aims for safety," Sept. 18). Perhaps you could promote signals long used by downhill skiers: "On your Right" or "On your left!" These alerts give precise information to a walker and enable him or her to decide instantly where to step - left or right - to avoid impending danger.

Felicia Eppley

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NASA budget raise unnecessary

To the Editor:

Three billion dollars is not chump change, as Joe Dwyer says ("NASA deserves financial, public support for endeavors," Sept. 18). Compare it to how much NASA spends annually or to your monthly lunch budget, it doesn't matter - $3 billion remains $3 billion.

Instead of thinking in Monopoly money-sized units, one should think about a single dollar. Where can the next dollar be best spent? What is given up by spending that dollar on one project instead of another, i.e., what is its opportunity cost?

So is it best to spend one more dollar on NASA for a moon landing repeat? Or instead to give a teacher a raise? Or to reduce taxes one dollar? Or, more likely, to reduce the national government debt?

Next, iterate this process. I doubt NASA will win three billion times in a row.

David Splinter

Economics graduate student

Online Comment of the Week

In response to "NASA deserves financial, public support for endeavors," Sept. 18:

As a physicist I like big rockets and space as much as the next guy, but crucially missing from this opinion piece is why investment in going back to space ... is worth the money at all. For the money spent, the ISS has been exceedingly meager in terms of scientific knowledge provided, and the space shuttle program has been a series of expensive launches, sometimes of marginal utility. We used to build two of each satellite we would send up, send the first, see what needed fixing for the second, do the necessary repairs and then send up the second. Now we have extremely risky missions to repair the Hubble, etc.

NASA and our space program (plus the Soviets, ESA, JSA, etc.) have done some amazing things in expanding our knowledge of the universe, and we should applaud them for that. And though it's sexy to send a man to Mars, we have to stop and ask ourselves if taking the money away from our scientific mission (unless you can get the money from elsewhere) is worth it.

Paul Anzel

Will Rice '09

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