Flying

                This month, a Germanwings flight crashed into the Alps. The CO-pilot of the plane locked the pilot out of the cockpit and slowly descended into the French Alps.  This killed all 144 passengers. Read more here (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32063587)

                This is so unbelievable sad, creepy, and bizarre. The Co-pilot made no contact with anyone and as far as we know, is not a part of any terrorist groups.  The creepiest thing of all, he just sat in a cockpit absolutely calm and silent with hundreds of people screaming as he was killing them all. It is scary that there are people in this world who can kill hundreds of innocent people without any guilt, regret, or thought.

                Flying is a touchy subject; it’s been in the news a lot lately with these missing flights and crashes. People have and are starting to acquire a larger fear to flying. Passengers were afraid there would be a terrorist on their flight.  The national government is afraid of an attack by flying so they have increased security (TSA).  Passengers now are scared that their pilots might turn against them and get them killed. This is a major hit, I felt like the pilot is the one person on the plane I could trust, the one that would look out for everyone on the plane. I won’t be doubting any pilots anytime soon but everyone will probably be a little more careful around their pilots. They shouldn’t have to feel that way, there are thousands of flights daily with thousands of trustable pilots but it just took one for everyone to lose trust in the person who has your life in their hands.  It really makes you want to appreciate and thank the pilots that do their jobs so well.  Pilots have hundreds of lives in their hands and they try their best to make sure we are safe, they shouldn’t be judged, bashed, or hated on just because of one incident. 

NASA

                Now this is a topic where I might begin to rant on so fair warning.   I like this subject and tend to get emotional.

                Science is extremely interesting to me. I love science, its fun interesting, and there is nothing better than learning about our world. Most of all, I love physics. The laws and the world that we discover through math and observations blow my mind sometimes. Science is awesome and our country and world is very determined to learn more science, tons upon tons of resources and a millennium of time have been used to try to unlock the unknown. I want our knowledge as humans to expand so far beyond this world, I want to know all about our universe. In this blog I’m going to discuss how science has been held back and what we can do to not let that happen.

                NASA is a government agency that everyone knows. It works on the deep and dark world outside of ours that is space. The agency has put a lot of people on the moon , taken some of the most beautiful and interesting pictures, help create a giant space station that orbits our planet, sent a robot  to mars to observe the giant red rock, and even sent a manmade object past our solar system. It’s amazing what the agency has done since the beginning of the space race in 1957. NASA has brought humanity a long way but there is still a lot to be discovered.

                Lately though, NASA and humanity has come to a halt on space exploration. After the golden age of space in the 60s, NASA’s budget has been cut severely, extremely severely. From when nearly 4.5% of our government spending was on space exploration in mid-60s, to today when it is at about .5% of our budget. That money is really important to the space industry. Science has been severely cut as well. We could have humans on mars by now and even possibly other planets. That just infuriates me for some reason. This is something I can get really emotion about. To think that we could have been discovering so much more and even gaining more power as a country, but we put space to the backburner and here we are, possibly decades away from setting foot on mars. Exploring our world is natural as humans and just forgetting about it isn’t the right option.

                The budget cuts began occurring in the 70s and lately have begun to increase more and more for many reasons. One is of course the reason we started our space exploration in the first place, competition. That’s right, we can all thank those wonderful Soviets for allowing us explore space. Mountains and mountains of money went into NASA just to beat the USSR, now that they are less competition, we spend less. Although that is the main reason, along with spending being moved to other areas such as our military, there are others. I think another reason is that the next obstacle, Mars, seemed impossible back in that time. Billions and Billions of dollars were spending just trying to get people to the moon and back. Mars is a much heavier task and I think a lot of the moral of our country dropped once we realized, the next step won’t be any easier. Reaching the Moon seemed impossible, it was so far away. Mars is about 150 times farther from Earth than the Moon, which is a lot farther away.

                I want the budget for NASA to increase greatly. I want to see us hit Mars and use our intellect to our full potential. There are a lot smart people in this world who want to see humans go beyond home and conquer the great unknown, we just need the resources to do it. I’m fine with taking out a few billion in national defense, which by the way is 57% of our federal budget. Take a few giant unneeded tanks and put them into the NASA budget, we could see a major increase of breakthroughs in the space world. We could unlock the unknowns of our universe, whatever it is. 

Rooftops

                                This is a quick post.  France has created a new law this month. This law requires that all new buildings must be built with to have either solar panels or plants on their roof.  Read more here (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-new-rooftops-must-be-covered-in-plants-or-solar-panels).

                This is an incredible idea and is just what you dream about. It’s what you see in all those cool futuristic utopia books.  With this law being passed in France that story is now coming true. France is taking steps, such as this, to make sure our world is clean and efficient. Other motions such as making public transit free which helps to cut the amount of cars on the road and making use of nuclear energy could make pollution in France non-existent. Here in the US, I feel we need to start implementing these types of steps.  Pass a few laws, even a few small ones, to help make our society cleaner. It may cost money, which seems to always be in short supply but I feel making our world a clean and wonderful place is important and I’m glad France has started making these steps to become a clean utopia.