Keith Yost Should We Cut NASA Funding

Now that the Space Race is over, what is the point? Are we wasting our money? Should we cut their budget? When the cold war ended with the soviets in 1991, it sparked up a debate as to whether or not the funding for the National Aeronautics and space administration should be continued. Although it may seem like a simple fix, it has proved to be one of NASA’s greatest and most difficult challenges yet. In the article, “Should We Cut NASA Funding?” written by Keith Yost, he answers the questions that have been the topic of debate for over 20 years. He states that it is predicted that in the Florida conference, President Obama will talk about the reductions that will be made to NASA’s budget. In his article, Yost takes a clear position on the

Specifically, the Red Herring logical fallacy was the direct cause of his ineffective argument. Throughout the whole article there are spots of logical fallacies which unveil the weaknesses in Yost’s claim. While introducing his first sub claim, which was the expensive costs of a NASA space shuttle he says “It is spending the sweat of our laborers, the genius of our scientists, the hopes of our children” (Yost). After giving us many examples, comparing the price of a space shuttles to things such as “50 million bushels of wheat”, he randomly jumps off topic. This logical fallacy is known as red herring. Yost went from wheat to laborers, scientists, and children, which makes his claim very hard to follow. While talking about but the money to better use it happens again, he says “Mr. levinger argues that NASA is small potatoes, a mere drop…… compared to, spending on military. But just because NASA is a small waste, or a waste among many, does not mean it isn’t waste…” (Yost). This is the first instance in which we see the name Mr. Levinger. This character doesn’t get introduced and we have no clue who he is. Also he is thrown into a quote that makes almost no sense which has logical fallacies written all over it. As the audience begins to ask questions, they begin to lose focus on your claim and argument. Yost’s credibility has doubted with the

I completely disagree with his points because they are in accurate and display no backing of evidence. Yost’s main claim was that we should cut the NASA’s budget and focus more on humanity than “planting flags on planets” (Yost). The space program is not the only department within the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations control. In fact, there are over 15 different departments within NASA and one of those is the department of earth science and research. The Earth Science and research department within NASA is responsible fore conducting tests on global climate change, in hopes of figuring out the mysteries of global warming. By Cutting NASA’s budget it will not just decrease the space programs budget, like Yost’s believes, it will decrease the budget of every department within NASA. According to the article “The GOP attack on climate change science takes a big step forward” written by Michael Hiltzik, the Earth Science Department will be cut by nearly 20% losing over 323 million dollars, which will cripple their ability to research the global climate changes. Even by decreasing NASA’s budget Keith Yost’s wont be happy, because he didn’t do the proper research. Yost also said that the huge expenses that were going toward the militaries budget didn’t matter and that it wouldn’t change the outcome. According to “Defense Spending: Today’s