Being in Space: Is it Really Worth it?

Americans know that their government spends billions of dollars for the exploration and
exploitation of space. But how much of the federal budget is really devoted to it? What
does it buy? What is the balance between practical activities (like weather prediction and
espionage) and discovery (like the Hubble Space Telescope). Have private sector
entities like SpaceX changed America’s presence in space?

Join Michael Gorn – a noted aerospace historian, author, and former Chief Historian of
the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center – for a brief, entertaining look at how the U.S.
and the rest of the world have explored the cosmos during the space age. His talk is
based on his new book, Spacecraft: 100 Iconic Rockets, Shuttles, and Stations That Put
Us in Space, which celebrates the 60 th anniversary of NASA’s birth this year, and the 50th
anniversary of the first human steps on the Moon during Apollo 11 in 2019.