With NASA budget cuts looming, one 6-year-old kid is taking as direct a route as he can to ask President Obama to save the nation’s space program.
Connor Johnson of Denver, Colorado loves space and hopes to be an astronaut one day.
“The whole reason I want to be an astronaut so I can discover, like, new worlds and discover, like, asteroids or stuff that I could build stuff out of,” he says.
But he quickly realized that the $10.41 in his piggy bank wasn’t going to make up for the 2014 fiscal year shortfall about to hit NASA, so he decided to petition the White House to increase funding.
“Increase NASA funding. So we can discover new worlds, protect us from danger and to make dreams come true,” reads the petition. “Increase the funding for NASA so that children can dream of exploring the universe. Science funding is the future of our country.”
The petition currently boasts about 10,000 signatures, and it needs 90,000 more by December 29th to hit the signature threshold and (hopefully) for an official White House response.
The White House previously requested $17.7 billion in 2014 funding for NASA, but lawmakers are looking to slash nearly $1 billion from NASA’s budget. As of now, NASA’s exact 2014 funding remains up in the air.
This kid is cute, and his point is more than valid – we all need the promise of space exploration to make dreams come true – and it’s not like we’re giving NASA anything significant anyway. You lose more money in your couch every week than you give to NASA in taxes. Still, little Connor is just 6 years old, and has yet to fully realize just how futile an exercise posting a petition to the White House’s site really is.