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How Bill Nye Insulted NASCAR Fans About the Sport Being the "Anti-NASA" (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Bill Nye, the former science guy and current head of the Planetary Society, is very depressed about NASA and NASCAR, according to a story in Business Insider. He believes that the red-state yokels pay too much attention to NASCAR, which employs gas guzzling cars in races, and not enough to NASA, which employs cutting edge and environmentally correct technology, to explore the universe. However, it is a meme that the space agency itself once disagreed with. Indeed, NASA has suggested that the exploration of space is like NASCAR only with rocket ships instead of souped up, high powered cars
First, NASA was pandering when it said space travel was like NASCAR. Any relationship is thoroughly stretched... except maybe the emphasis on orbiting. But space stations don't need to worry about camber.
Second, what Bill said was an "All tigers are cats" issue. Yes, you will probably see a higher concentration of NASCAR fans in the anti-NASA group, but by no means is he saying that NASA supporters cannot be NASCAR fans or that all NASCAR fans are unintelligent. He wasn't insulting "(All) NASCAR fans", he was equating people who pay more attention to NASCAR than NASA to a lower intelligence.
Ex.
A: Your cousin is stupid.
B: How dare you insult my family name!?
A: No, not your family name-- YOUR COUSIN.
Except that is a very wrong interpretation. NASCAR designs its rules to make cars conform such that the race is a test of skill. The cleverness and science comes in with tiny finesse tweaks to everything and anything the crews can get away with. You can think of NASCAR technology as being detail oriented in a strict environment where formula racing is revolution oriented in a loose environment.
"An engine needs very advanced designs and lubricants to sustain that for 3-4 hours."
Awwww, how cute... Now go watch the 24 hour races like for example Le Mans 24 hours. No engine repairs or engine swaps allowed during the race, yet the top class averages over 300km/h over the 24h race, including pit stops, yellow flags/code 60's, safety cars(on a 13km+ track no less!), on a track that has much greater wear and tear on engine, gearbox, brakes etc, since it's not an oval.