What Difference, At This Point, Will It Make?

....and how much did it cost the American taxpayer? Inquiring minds want to know.

Yesterday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced to the world that it had discovered seven new 'Earth-like' planets revolving around a small star, some of which may be sustaining some form of life.

Great. Wonderful. Let's start planning a mission to go there, maybe set up a colony.

Hold on a minute. How far away are those planets?

Oh, only a mere 40 light-years.

Wrap your mind around this: a beam of light would circle the Earth four times in one second. There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. A light year measures distance in space, or how far a beam of light travels in a year. Now, multiply that distance by a factor of 40....and you'll have a rough idea how far away those new discoveries are.

I have several questions for NASA concerning their grand proclamation: how much did this discovery cost the taxpayers and, furthermore, what does it mean right now, this very second? NASA's estimated budget for fiscal year 2016 was 19.3 billion dollars, an increase of $1.3 billion over the year before. BILLIONS of dollars, a portion of which was used to find these seven planets that are so far away you can't even see them from Sarah Palin's house.

HOW does their discovery affect those of us right here in Mainstream USA? NASA spends money on Mars missions, the International Space Station and a plethora of other projects, yet we have citizens in these United States that can't even get clean drinking water unless it comes out of a plastic bottle; we have homeless military veterans existing from day to day, hungry children from single-parent families in our schools, elderly citizens surviving on cat food...and we're supposed to be excited about the money NASA invested in finding these irrelevant planets?

I think not.