Neil deGrasse Tyson: "We Stopped Dreaming"

Ready to get fired up about America's space program? Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson drop some knowledge on the history of NASA and current spending priorities. Here's a brief quote:

"We go to the moon. Space enthusiasts say, 'Oh, we're on the moon in '69, we'll be on Mars in another ten years.' They completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place: we were at war. Once we saw that Russia was not ready to land on the moon, we stopped going to the moon. That should not surprise anybody looking back on it. Meanwhile, however, that entire era [of space exploration] galvanized the nation -- forget the war as a driver, it galvanized us all to dream about tomorrow."

Also: "Do you realize that the $850 billion bank bailout -- that sum of money -- is greater than the entire fifty-year running budget of NASA?"

See also: Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're most definitely dealing with a badass over here.