On the recordJune 3, 2004
If you talk to our teachers in our schools, they will tell you the thing that gets people most motivated to study math and science, young kids, what excites young kids in the third grade and the fourth grade and the sixth grade to really hunker down and study math and science, more than any other subject, it is the space program. When you take the science teaching, math teaching, and apply it to the space program, the teachers tell me it gets them excited. How do you put a price tag on that? How do you measure that? You are talking about our competitiveness. Where are we creating jobs? We are creating jobs in the technology arenas. But if we are losing ground on technology because our young people are not studying those fields, then that can affect our whole economy. And how do you put a dollar value on that? I think the gentleman is absolutely right, and he said it best, we cannot afford not to invest in NASA.
Source
govinfo.gov
