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As the race for U.S. President starts to heat up, Barack Obama has continued to polish his image as the youthful candidate promising a hopeful future. And yet he's also on record saying "[U.S. Space Agency] NASA is no longer associated with inspiration." He's proposing cutting NASA's budget in order to fund early-education programs for kids under 5. It's hard to fault his desire to educate kids, but why sacrifice space programs to do it? If elected, is it possible that Obama, the "hopeful" candidate, will destroy our hopes for space exploration and colonization? More »
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Hilary Clinton is currently the only presidential candidate with a space plan, which can't be pleasing to the scientists and scifi writers who warn that the human race must escape from Earth if it's to have any future. It's probably not surprising that 1970s astronomer icon Carl "billions of stars" Sagan was an offworld booster; nor would it boggle your mind to know that SF visionary Octavia Butler's post-apocalypse duet Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is about why colonizing space is one of the most urgent political tasks of our time. But space travel as a political issue goes back further than that — way further. More »
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Apparently Hilary Clinton is the only presidential candidate who has taken a public stand on space-related issues. In a terrifically-helpful rundown of candidates' sci/tech policies from Popular Mechanics, Clinton was the only one to comment on the space program. She promised to renew NASA's R&D funding, prep for more human space flights, and maintain NASA's extensive network of Earth Science-related satellites for measuring the progress of climate change. But she also shared one interesting science policy promise with another Democratic front runner. More »
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