Personally, I'm lining up for the popcorn... BUT Astronomy is not an ivory tower. The very subject encompasses biology, geology, chemistry, climatology, physics, mathmatics and a host of other scientific areas. Astronomy is the shell under which all these other areas fit together to make the universe - or "cosmos." How can you look at Venus and not wonder about how the clouds formed (climatology), what the land is like and how it formed (geology), the possibility of life in whatever form, if it ever existed (biology). You can show people the planet Venus, even without a telescope, but that doesn't tell them very much. It takes the other scientific areas to give it con text. Like on Venus, Mars, Jupiter or the new mega-earth NASA has discovered, it takes all the other areas of science to make sense of it all. Science is not a chinese menu where you can take three from column A and none from column B. That is even more true in regards to Earth . Life on this planet is dependant on its existence and viability . How it functions and its future functionality is important to the human species. And whether we survive as a species, whether we deserve to survive, depends on a our full understanding of how this planet works and to fix it if we have screwed it up. No one should expect a supreme being to come and clean-up the mess we made. We should be taking responsibility for our own actions. Extra butter with my popcorn please.