{"id":5649,"date":"2012-08-05T13:11:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T18:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=5649"},"modified":"2012-08-05T13:11:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-05T18:11:35","slug":"would-thomas-jefferson-have-used-tax-money-to-go-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=5649","title":{"rendered":"Would Thomas Jefferson have used tax money to go to Mars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If all goes as intended, this evening the US Government will have a new highly advanced Rover sitting on the surface of the planet of Mars.\u00a0\u00a0 The price tag of this mission is $2.5 (B)illion dollars.\u00a0\u00a0 The people working on the mission are confident that if it ends in failure and crashes, that the US Congress will give them more money to try again.<\/p>\n

Is there any basis on which to think that the Founding Fathers would have thought it was a legitimate responsibility of the Federal Government to fund space exploration?<\/p>\n

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson began building\u00a0 the first Astronomical Observatory in the United States<\/a> on the University of Virginia campus.\u00a0\u00a0 He clearly believed that understanding the nature of the Universe was one of the most important things men could do.<\/p>\n

But would he have had the Federal government doing it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If all goes as intended, this evening the US Government will have a new highly advanced Rover sitting on the surface of the planet of Mars.\u00a0\u00a0 The price tag of this mission is $2.5 (B)illion dollars.\u00a0\u00a0 The people working on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-politics","category-libtertarian-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5650,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions\/5650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}