What business does NASA have studying economics and capitalism, you ask? Just another example of of the politicization of everything under the sun in a progressive administration.

Kaitlyn Schallhorn of Campus Reform reports.

University researchers use NASA-funded model to blame capitalism for inevitable collapse of civilization

A study—relying on a NASA funded model—partly blames “Elites” for economic stratification and the coming collapse of global civilization and is causing controversy prior to its official publication.

Safa Motesharrei, a Ph.D. candidate in applied mathematics and public policy at the University of Maryland, led the “Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies” project alongside researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Minnesota. While earlier drafts of the study are available online, the final copy is set to be published this week in the journal Ecological Economics.

The HANDY model came to fruition at the request of NASA, which asked researchers at the University of Maryland to build a model tracking climate change and population trends.

“Everyone else does predictions of climate change but we asked researchers to build a similar model that builds into it populations,” Stephen Cole, a spokesperson for NASA, told Campus Reform in an interview. “Most models are just calculations that show just how the Earth works.”

Cole explained that NASA has a “cooperative agreement” with the University of Maryland, meaning that NASA scientists can ask university researchers to work on projects and in turn, university researchers can propose ideas to NASA.

Because of this partnership, the space agency provides a $26,000 grant to the university to use on such projects.