Neil deGrasse Tyson Interview  Neil deGrasse Tyson On Time
Travel, Mars & Making Science Easy  Page 2 of 2  Jim Clash:
During the Apollo program in the 1960s, NASA made up 4% of the
U.S. budget. Today it is just 0.5%. To begin to do what you
envision, what is a reasonable number?  Neil deGrasse Tyson: If
we doubled NASA’s budget -- made it 1% -- that would make a
manned Mars mission very close instead of stretching it out 25
years. It would also enable us to go back to the moon. We could
launch asteroid reconnaissance missions and start thinking about
the moon for an observatory. The back side is quiet, shielded
from the radio emissions of Earth, so we could do good science
there like more monitoring of climates on Mars and Venus, places
where conditions have gone bad. Since they are our neighbors in
space, we kind of want to know what happened to see what risk we
have here.  JC: We see study after study showing kids falling
behind in science and math vs. the rest of the world. What
should we do?  NDT: The pr