These are lines sung by Paul Simon in the last stanza of a 1973 song describing the tensions within our country of exceptional accomplishment and tremendous internal strife. I wonder what a songwriter documenting a particular period of unrest — an unpopular, questionable war overseas in parallel with protest for just treatment of individuals within our borders — thinks about a song whose lines still ring familiarly 50 years later? Is that a timeless piece of art or the ultimate frustration?

The song has been resonating with me lately for lots of reasons. The feelings of uncertainty are all too relatable. At the same time I’m hearing the quite certain words of President Donald Trump from a public address last week, justifying our country’s acts of war upon Iran, that it “has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat … This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future.”

This supposed investment in our children costs around $1 billion dollars a day. A billion is real money, one thousand millions of dollars. But I suspect the real cost, our investment, is tabulated in human life and our ethical responsibility on this planet. While we live in a world in which many might say we have people who are “good” or “bad.” And, we’re currently working on a strategy in which the “good” people are killing the “bad” ones. I have to wonder: What moral standing will such good folks have after all that eviscerating?

Isn’t it amazing that we are so capable of so many things? While I’m composing this and as we’re launching missiles and releasing bombs, NASA’s Artemis II astronauts are ever so distant from these campaigns, entering the pull of the moon’s gravity. They achieve lunar orbit and see the moon’s hidden half from their own “ship that sailed the moon,” the first of its kind since Simon penned his song “American Tune” so many decades ago.

Like war, Artemis is expensive, also billions of dollars, though spent over years rather than days. We are more measured in our missions to the moon than with deployments upon foreign soil. And yet, it’s still good to ask why we should have such NASA missions, especially as we prioritize eviscerating “bad” people expediently.

I’m more complicit in this spending and killing than most. Besides having a role in our democratic society, I prepare new physicists with trajectories that could be off to graduate school to study fundamental particles; it could mean a career in teaching (my favorite); it could entail going to work for one of many facilities tied to our military. Mass destruction and space exploration are rooted in essentially the same technologies and mechanisms. Those with warheads are much more widely produced, though, and our military budgets are many hundreds of times more than our science budgets.

This disturbs me to my core. I’m working through it, both how I deal with this internally as a science teacher and what I do about it as a citizen. Of course, I’ve known many arguments that counter my own sensibilities. People ask what the point of NASA, moon missions, telescopes, planetary climate monitors, and so much more are really all about. How are these a “true investment in your children” and ourselves, especially in a world so wrought with hateful violence?

For me, having something launched to the moon is not about the immediate gains. This mission won’t rebuild a school in Tehran. There is no profit in achieving lunar orbit, though I know people will look for such. Looking back on ourselves from a spacecraft, I hope we recognize more about who we are and what we’re responsible for. I hope we understand a bit more about our moon’s characteristics and our abilities, too. But give me a sense of awe at a time when all we seem to dwell on is the awful.

As a citizen and taxpayer of the U.S., I’ll offer our space program and scientific accomplishment as a small olive branch. Maybe this is penance, or maybe futility. Or, maybe it’s a reminder that we, our best selves and our best work and our best aspirations, could be something more than our military offensives.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah. This commentary is provided through a partnership with Weber State. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent the institutional values or positions of the university.