The 900 students at Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, Rhode Island are looking forward to their mid-October chat with the ISS via the international "Amateur Radio on the International Space Station" program.
I am saddened every time I see these videos. NASA shouldn't have had to prepare videos like these to convince the American people in the value of science. America unfortunately is a selfish and uneducated nation with short attention spans. The truth is most research conducted on the ISS is 'basic research' and has very little practical benefits. That however doesn't make it any less valuable. Think of it this way: The electron was pretty useless when it was discovered in 1897. Today we have a whole world running on electronics.
