The Great West Wing Rewatch: 2.9 "Galileo"

Joel: Confession time. I love space. I feel like the idea of going to space, and exploring space should be much more in the forefront of the national conscious than it really is. So of course I’m going to have affection for the episode of The West Wing where they talk about exploring Mars and why it’s the right thing to do, not only politically, but as a species as well. I remember the first time hearing Sam talk about why we were going to Mars. If’ you’ll recall, I was still quite young during the first run of The West Wing, it was a show that my mom watched and I watched it because any tv is better than no tv at that age. I remember Sam voicing thoughts and opinions that I didn’t even know that I had. The thought of things that we made here, on this planet, going out and landing on other worlds is something still fills me with a sense of wonder. I stand with the President on this one. There is a right way to say it.

Chris: You’re not going to get anyone on this article to be opposed to space exploration. As Joel said, he loves space and I join him in that confession. I could watch movies like Interstellar, The Martian and Gravity all day long (and that’s saying a lot because I hate Sandra Bullock) and I’ll reread Neil Degrasse Tyson’s book “The Space Chronicles” every few months. And I echo Sam’s thoughts about how space exploration may not seem like it should be an immediate concern to the problems here on land but, like Sam said, it’s what we are meant to do. I’m even glad that lower Earth orbit missions have been defunded in NASA because it’s time to go beyond where we’ve already been. And I don’t think there’s any coincidence that this space discussion is paired with a B story that features a situation with Russia. For better or worse, our two countries are going to be linked in one way or another. The Cold War was such a motivating factor in space exploration and this episode features two countries that are on better terms but so many decades were spent distrusting each other and it lingers on after the fact.

A good president hates green beans