Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "We Stopped Dreaming (E02)" Transcript

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc

Space. Three hundred billion dollar industry worldwide. NASA is actually a tiny percentage of that. Interesting. How small a percent NASA is to the total world spending of space. That little bit, however, is what inspires dreams. Every corporation in here with representatives to this conference: If you ever even touched a science mission, you'd lead off with that in your quarterly reports -- annual reports.

Because, it inspires, it is the act of discovery that empowers nations in the world to undertake this activities. We know this. Apollo 8. That was the FIRST TIME anybody ever LEFT Earth! With a destination in mind. Yeah, figure-eighted around the moon. Photo. Of Earth. Rising over the lunar landscape. Earthrise over the moon. There was Earth. Seen not as the mapmaker would have you identify it. No. The countries were not color coded. With boundaries. It was seen as nature intended it to be viewed. Oceans. Land. Clouds.

We went to the moon and we discovered Earth!  I claim we discovered Earth. For the first time. How does that affect culture? I got a list! The instance that photo comes out, that is the identifying cover picture of the whole Earth catalog. Thinking of Earth as a whole. Not as a place where nations war. As a whole. 1970. The comprehensive Clean Air Act. Earth Day was birthed, March 1970. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970. The organization Doctors Without Borders was founded in 1971. Where do you even get that phrase from!? No one thought of that phrase before that photo was published. Because every globe in your classroom has countries painted on it. DDT gets banned in 1972. We're still going to the moon; we're still looking back to Earth. Clean Water Act, 1971. 1972, Endangered Species Act. The catalytic converter gets put in, in 1973. Unleaded gas, 1973. We're still at war in Vietnam! There's still campus on rest. Yet, we found the time to start thinking about Earth.

That is space, operating on our culture and you cannot even put a price on that. That is-- that is, a nation, that is a world, we're acting to a new perspective on what it is to be alive, on this planet we all share. We need to look at NASA not as a hand-out, but as an investment. Because, as goes, the health of space varying ambitions, so to goes the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, the creative and the economic ambitions of a nation. So goes the future of America.

Penny4NASA.org/petition

Credits
The Space Foundation    -       http://www.spacefoundation.org/
NASA TV                 -       http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
HDNET                   -       http://www.hd.net/
SpaceX                  -       http://www.spacex.com/
When We Left Earth      -       http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/nasa/nasa.html
Looney Tunes            -       http://www.warnerbros.com/
Disneynature: Earth     -       http://disney.go.com/disneynature/earth/
Planet Earth            -       http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/planet-earth/
HOME Project            -       http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject
User WolfEchoes         -       http://www.youtube.com/user/WolfEchoes?ob=0
European Southern Observatory   http://www.eso.org