NASA Watch quotes from a TV interview with Barack Obama:
“I’ve got a strong belief in NASA and the process of space exploration. I do think that our program has been stuck for a while – that the space shuttle mission did not inspire the imagination of the public – that much of the experimentation that was done could have been conducted not necessarily with manned flights. I think that broadening our horizons – and looking at a combination of both unmanned satellites of the sort that we saw with the Jupiter launch – but also looking at where we can start planning for potential manned flights. I think that is something that I’m excited about and could be part of a broader strategy for science and technology investment … The only thing I want to say is that I want to do a thorough review because some of these programs may not be moving in the right direction and I want to make sure that NASA spending is a little more coherent than it has been over the last several years.”
It would be good to have a President who understood the difference in science payoff between manned and unmanned spaceflight. The former is exciting and inspirational, the latter gets enormously greater results per dollar. The Bush administration, with their magical ability to screw up everything they touch, has been killing off science at NASA in favor of a misguided Moon/Mars initiative (despite public apathy). But the situation is not hopeless. The way we fund science in this country is completely irrational, starting up a ten-year project one year and canceling it (leaving international partners high and dry) the next. The good news is that we can use such capriciousness to our advantage, pulling the plug from expensive boondoggles that were initiated for political reasons rather than scientific ones. I would rather have a thoughtful system of setting research priorities and a track record of commitment to long-term projects, but you go to war with the army you have.
While correct, this assumes that NASA is primarily a scientific organization, as opposed to a geostrategic technology enabling organization.
While the science benefits of the space station are low, it does keep soviet rocket scientists employed, instead of proliferating.
If we retask NASA as a science only organization, how much of the diplomatic/ strategic money will move to science, and how much will simply disappear?
I think it is hardly obvious that NASA should be spending large sums of money to send unmanned probes to study the geology of other planets (boring!) rather than sending real humans to mars.
Lab Lemming, there is no question that NASA is not exclusively, or even primarily, a scientific research organization. But when they do justify missions on the basis of science, it should be done for good reasons.
If the US were to sit down and do a rational cost-benefit analysis, at the end of which we decided to spend 500+ billion dollars to go to Mars, that would be fine. But there is no reason why that should lead to dramatic cuts in the much cheaper science that can be done without manned spaceflight, and that’s exactly what is happening now.
You might want to speak to his constituents at Fermilab to find out how good a job Obama has done recently of supporting fundamental physics research.
I’ll definitely be voting for the Democratic candidate in the fall and it seems nearly certain to be Obama, but it sure as hell won’t be because of his record in this area.
Sean, the solution seems clear: the scientific community needs to come up with some national objective that really would best be achieved by astronauts — for which trying to do the same thing with unmanned spacecraft would be an expensive, irrational boondoggle — and then present its case to Congress in a clear and compelling way. As soon as it does that, I predict Congress will try to spite the eggheads by cutting their beloved manned space program, and diverting the money to unmanned space flight.
Jess, you’ve got it all wrong.
Firstly, the current crop of Martian missions is mostly trying to find signs of life without determining the basic geology of the planet. Despite numerous attempts of determine the history of water, the early environment, etc., we still don’t really know some fundamental aspects of Mars’s composition, like whether the core is solid or liquid.
And Juno, the only mission for fundamental planetary physics with absolutely no life angle whatsoever, has been threatened with cancellation once. This despite the fact that it is our best bet at determining how Jupiter formed, and by extension, the hundreds of other exoplanets that have been discovered to date.
And secondly, planetary geology is way more interesting than any other type of science. We just aren’t as good as other scientists at explaining why.
😉
Peter, please elaborate. A quick Googling of “Obama Fermilab” brings up some supportive statements and visits to the lab.
George
Sean, I agree that the purely scientific missions are logically distinct from manned “because it’s there” undertakings (so that the decision to fund the former should be relatively independent from the latter). However, I think the politically reality is that there is a trade-off to some extent.
For the sake of discussion, what are the worthwhile mission which are at risk of being cut because of the long-term mars plans?
George,
All politicians make supportive statements about scientific research, the real question is what they do when budget decisions have to be made. What happened this past year is that when it came time to figure out how to cut the FY2008 budget to a level that Bush would not veto, the decision was made to achieve this in part by gutting fundamental physics research, especially high-energy physics, and especially Fermilab. Funding for programs crucial to the future of the lab was eliminated, and 200 people are in the process of being laid off, with the rest on involuntary furlough two days a month.
This kind of thing doesn’t happen to a federally-funded lab if its Congressional representatives actually do strongly support what it is doing and are willing to use some political capital to fight for it. The district containing Fermilab is represented by Judy Biggert in the House, a Republican who probably doesn’t have the pull to fight such a cut, and two Democratic senators, Durbin and Obama, neither of who seems to have found research at Fermilab something worth fighting for, even though the people losing their jobs are their constituents.
Since the scientific community pride itself in its analytic abilities and objectivity, someone might want to start calculating the longterm effect on all scientific expenditures of the current credit meltdown. When what is happening to municipal bonds reaches the federal level, all bets are off.
I agree with Peter.
Also, what does he mean when he says “NASA spending is a little more coherent than it has been over the last several years.” what??
NASA has been cutting costs left and right. Their budget is already very limited and barely keeping up with inflation.
“I think that broadening our horizons – and looking at a combination of both unmanned satellites of the sort that we saw with the Jupiter launch”
Isn’t this what we HAVE been doing??
Sean I do not think NASA will be a priority for the next president especially Obama.
http://obama.3cdn.net/a8dfc36246b3dcc3cb_iem6bxpgh.pdf — see page 15
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/26/481595.aspx
To balance things out we should also look at Clinton’s initiative to “end the war on science”
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=3566
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=3570
Peter: I believe you’re off by a district. Fermilab itself is in the 14th district, and a big part of the problem that you’ve overlooked is that this is Denny Hastert’s (now former) district. He resigned in the middle of his term last November with about two weeks of formal notice.
It’s true that Durbin and Obama dropped the ball, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for Fermilab – they lost a powerful benefactor right when the funding bill was going through.
BG,
Thanks. Biggert’s district is the neighboring one, some of her constituents are among those losing their jobs.
People keep saying that “Durbin and Obama dropped the ball”, attributing this to incompetence rather than a reflection of their priorities. Is there any evidence for this?
For those of you outside Chicago,
Bill Foster, a former scientist at Fermilab is running as the Democratic candidate in the 14th district against Jim Oberweis, a dairy millionaire.
The 13th district, Judy Biggert’s is the home to Argonne, another DOE lab.
Elliot
It’s hard for me to get up in arms about the Fermilab funding (despite the fact that I work there). Our current president is a jerk who made statements about what he would or wouldn’t veto. The democrats are in the majority, but not a veto proof majority. It came down to cut whether to cut the core safety net programs near and dear to democrats’ hearts or the science budget. Science should have better funding, but when a president is sucking huge amounts of money away for war costs (which congress finally decided to force Bush to put into the budget rather than use supplementary budgetary requests), there’s just not enough money to go around. And, while my livelihood depends on it, I can’t honestly say that the democrats should have taken money from social programs that help people in need.
Adam,
I agree but the choice should not be between social programs and funding science.
If the war funds were available and the tax cuts on the wealthiest 1% were eliminated, there would be another 400 billion dollars per year for the government to allocate to worthier endeavors.
Over 90% of the national debt is due to Reagan and Bush II.
e.
Hi Elliot,
I don’t want that choice to be made either. I would love for social programs and science to be both fully funded. However, to blame the democrats in congress for having to work with an intransigent president is not particularly fair. Without a veto-proof majority, the democrats still have their hands tied by the Bush administration.
What a dumb way to fund a vitally important government project. Good thing we don’t fund the Iraq war that way (yet).
No politician could succeed in convincing the public that manned flight is a waste of money, so no rational politician will try. I can’t blame Obama for that. We’re never going to get very far into space because of the physics of the thing, but we’re never going to admit that we can’t because of the rhetoric of the thing.
The Vision for Space Exploration, however poorly named and poorly hyped, is actually a Good Thing for NASA. In theory, it should not take anything from the science budget, because as the space shuttle is phased out and the space station is completed, those funds will be freed up to develop the VSE architecture.
I think the “Vision” is what NASA needs to be doing. Despite the bureaucracy and rampant Dilbert-ness at NASA, once we leave low earth orbit, even the pointy-haired bosses won’t be able to make it look boring, and excitement about space benefits the science and exploration sides. There is some good fundamental science to be done at the moon, and the Vision has the added benefit of resulting in a really powerful lifting vehicle to launch whatever needs launching, including future ambitious robotic missions.
Granted, science has taken some hits, and I agree that there is no good reason to cut good science to fund exploration. But neither should we stifle exploration to conduct more science. There is a balance to be struck somewhere.
I don’t know what an Obama presidency will do to NASA. I am hopeful that it would not delay the Vision for Space Exploration, but would lead to smarter NASA budgets in which valuable science is not cut unnecessarily. Hey, I can hope…
Peter,
I agree that none of the Democrats in congress did the right thing in regard to scientific research, and while that is important for me personally, I think it is only one of a great many important things that the government does. I find it rather understandable that, with so much going on in such a large budget and under such time constraints, no one could be bothered to defend what are (on the scale of the United States government) rather small expenditures of money and rather few jobs.
They sure made a mistake, in the long term, but it’s one they can probably be persuaded to fix. In the meantime, as far as evaluating the leadership of different candidates, I think there are bigger issues to think about.
Good point Jim. It really does become an arduous back and forth of words. Of course the public loves the prospect of manned missions to deeper space, but that is because the public does not understand the prospect of how to do it.
I’m currently interning at KSC, and I can’t see Mars in the horizon even if I squint really hard. If anything, the statement is a symbolic or political one. We got there first. Then what? You have a crew of highly skilled astronauts (whose contribution is desperately needed back on Earth) on a desolate, inhospitable surface swarming with more dangerous storms than have ever been seen on this planet, told to wait a year in place to make a ‘safe’ return journey. The orbital mechanics of the journey are treacherous to say the least, and the variables of a 2 year journey to/from a planet, versus a 6 day journey to/from a moon, are exponential in comparison. http://www.MarsSociety.org
The future of space exploration, manned or not, is not going to rise from the pocket of government, but from private, international collaborative investment that wish to explore (and exploit) the potential energies of the orbits of Earth, Moon, and nearby asteroids and the material resources they have available. Already, there are space programs in US, Russia, India, China, South Korea, Japan, Europe, Canada, and Israel (even Iran). It’s collaboration between any of them that will get us any farther; we’re reaching, if we haven’t already, the plateau of our singular nation’s capability. The only reason government funding has a root hold in space is from the Cold War, anything beyond us ‘getting there first’ versus the Soviets is what we have now– poking around in High Earth Orbit in an ISS that we desperately need to (symbolically) complete by 2010 to show the world “Look! We finished it!”
Bush’s last-ditch, get there before the Chinese, won’t work. It’s not the Moon. It’s an absurdly painful example of how he’s made policy a majority of his presidency. If anyone wants to actually do anything in space, we need investors in the futures of technology and space science in general, we need to organize these thinkers together, and wait. Let the pieces fall into place from there. Just like the countless by-products of NASA research in getting to the Moon, we’ll discover new technologies that will vastly aid mankind in just the research of the prospect of exploration. Anyone who relies on tax payers to fuel space exploration isn’t serious about it and won’t get far. A limited budget based program, with an iffy goal, is the Shuttle. We can do better than that, but not until the budget is buffeted by more than policy.
You need the technology, and rocket tech has already reached an impulse maximum, you can’t do much more than what we got after that– we need something new. Then you need a plan, as Sean said, a well-developed, thought-out plan on what the hell you’re going to do when you’re out there.
The crux of the problem is apathy. Apathy with science, apathy with technology (save what keeps us lousy, lazy, and fat). Students today are not inspired to learn, they just do it because they are told to do it. Just like professors are many times just told to be professors in order to research or study. We’ll only invest in what we have interest in. Today’s youth want mindless toys, not mindful study. We are at a loss for the future of technology, and it is because we as a state are warm, fed, and pilled-out. Who needs technology when you’re already glossed in comforts? It’s going to take something beyond ourselves, some pressure out of peace, that will get this nation busy with novelty. Until then, well, we seekers are left to wait on the rest to organize anything miraculously fantastic.
Wayne
I get uncomfortable feelings when ever manned space programs are proposed. The Return to the Moon program Bush advanced four years ago might have a “silver lining,” but often silver linings have a big black cloud. My sense is that the moon might be a possible platform for astronomical and cosmic ray physics systems. Maybe a largely robotic infrastructure on the moon with a down linked telepresent capability might be a way to run gravity wave interferometers, maybe particle physics detectors which look at 10^3-10^6 TeV scattering processes, and optical interferometers. The moon is a geologically neutral body and for astronomical instruments there would be far less problems with “jitters” or clutter noise. So maybe astronauts can be employed to establish and maintain such scientific infrastructure and fill in needed gaps where robotic presence falls short.
The problem is that NASA talks a lot about putting a “permanent” lunar base on the moon, by which is meant a lunar version of the current spacestation. This is to my mind a total waste of money and resources, but it is a way NASA and Washington technocrats can keep the American flag flying on the moon with astronauts there singing the Star Spangled Banner. The space shuttle proved itself worthwhile with a small number of missions flown, such as the Hubble Space Telescope service missions. The ISS, which the shuttle program is being devoted to, is largely a complete boondoggle.
NASA was established as an agency to demonstrate America’s technological supermacy over the Soviet Union in the so called “space race” of the 1960s. After NASA got astronauts on the moon in 1969 the agency, or at least the manned space program, has had a weak rudder. It is unclear whether a manned presence in space is needed, but if NASA is going to send astronauts to the moon, or in the cis-lunar space environment it would be best that a clear objective be established based on science and not on “gung-ho” and jingo-istic nonsense that often accompanies sending Buck Rogers into space.
Lawrence B. Crowell
A little known initiative of our first MBA president was to institute some sort of system to keep track of how the government agencies are achieving their goals. The NASA Science programs did reasonably well on this since they they are largely based on peer reviewed missions and strategies, with rare exceptions (like Gravity Probe B). But this exercise really revealed the problem with the manned space program: it has no goal. And if there was some goal (besides JFK’s goal for the Apollo program), it could probably be accomplished more cheaply by robots.
This really seems to explain the space station: there is really nothing that is critical for the space station to actually do, and so that is what it does when funds are tight: nothing. And I dare say that the same is likely to happen to the Moon initiative.
As for Mars, I think that it is simply doomed by the incredible risk aversion of both Congress and the public. The space shuttle is regarded as “too risky” with its 2% failure rate. But Mars missions can only be much more risky than this. If we can’t tolerate such a failure rate in the future, then the Mars program will die at the first accident.
Finally, I think that public support for such a program will continue to decrease with the younger generations. Eventually, we’ll have enough data from Mars rovers, so that they’ll be able to make a realistic Mars video game. And the question will arise: “Why should we spend a trillion to send Neil Armstrong III to Mars, when he can ‘virtually’ go there with a $29.99 video game?”
Seth,
I’m just not convinced that Obama thinks that the decision to cut Fermilab’s budget was a “mistake”, or that he can be persuaded to fix it. Sure, I’m going to vote for the guy because other things are more important. But it is not going to help the project of persuading him to do something about the HEP funding problem for physicists to promote him as a strong supporter of funding for physics research when his record shows quite the opposite. Sure, he’s a busy guy, but if he and his staff behave the same way this fiscal year that they did last year, there is not going to be much left to fix, and people need to be pointing this out to him.