Science & Tech Quote by Nick Lampson

Space is doing two jobs at once here: it is both a literal destination and a political technology for selling investment in unglamorous basics. Lampson frames science and math not as classroom abstractions or budget lines, but as the upstream fuel for a national story people actually want to fund. The phrase "must always" signals permanence and discipline, a preemptive strike against the familiar cycle where STEM becomes a slogan during crises and a target during appropriations.

The cleverness is in the causal shortcut: "no better way" turns space into the ultimate justification, a kind of policy trump card. Research spending becomes easier to defend when it is hitched to rockets, satellites, and the prestige of exploration. Space functions as a clean metaphor for the future: expansive, optimistic, hard to argue against without sounding small-minded. That optimism is strategic. It launders contentious choices - which programs get funded, which regions benefit, who gets contracts - through a bipartisan fantasy of human progress.

The subtext is also economic, even if the language stays lofty. For a politician, "research and development" often means jobs in aerospace, universities, and contractors; "space" means districts with NASA centers and supply chains. The quote sits in the long post-Apollo tradition of invoking the space program as an engine for innovation and a pipeline for talent. It's less a scientific claim than a coalition-building one: wrap education, industry, and national ambition into a single, forward-facing sentence that makes cutting R&D feel like cutting the future itself.