The American Astronomical Society (AAS), the professional organization for astronomers in the US (and not to be confused with the American Astronautical Society), issued a press release yesterday calling on NASA to restore funding for astronomical research within the agency. The AAS is particularly concerned about “research and analysis” (R&A) funding, grants to astronomers to perform basic research intended to support future agency missions and projects. Such funding is “the seed stock of the nation’s future talent”, according to David Black, who chair the AAS’ policy committee.
The AAS puts much of the blame for the problem at the feet of Congress rather than NASA itself: a “record level of unfunded congressional earmarks” have forced NASA to raid other programs for funding, with R&A programs just one of the victims, along with the proposed termination of current and new missions. Thus, the AAS is looking to NASA, not Congress, to solve the problem: “To ensure that long-term priorities are preserved and that science return is maximized in a reduced funding environment, NASA should involve members of the science community in a current assessment of missions before finalizing decisions on possible mission terminations.”
Let me guess they all of NASA money to go to thier pet projects and taken away from human space exploration..
The AAS has its eye on the ball. Despite a lot of wishful posturing, no one at NASA or the White House has ever seriously proposed any kind of space exploration other than scientific exploration. Commercial and military satellites are also supremely important and respectable, but they aren’t exploration.
In turn, the network of small, competitive, open-field grants from NSF, NASA, and DOE is the bedrock of scientific research. It is not particularly expensive, but it is crucial for everything else. If you want good advice from anything like a “roadmap” committee, this bedrock is the difference between real expert advice and a clown show. So it is a shame that both the human spaceflight program and Congressional earmarks are eating into it at NASA. If Washington really decides that small grants aren’t important, it might as well shut down NASA entirely to save money.
I prefer Human Spaceflight…
That’s great, except that NASA has never thought of missions for those humans in space other than science. So the direction that it’s going is science without scientists. It’s a complete waste of time and money.
“I prefer Human Spaceflight…”
So, the ISS is what you want? It’s a couple of guys going around in circles doing nothing but repairing broken equipment. At a cost of billions of dollars. What is the benefit to the rest of us?
You don’t seem to demonstrate much understanding of the issues here. For starters, the amount of money that these guys are discussing is miniscule. You can buy quite a few grad students and a few principal investigators for only a few tens of millions. That kind of money gets flushed down the human spaceflight toilet in a week of ISS operations.
The difference in amounts is so great that the two subjects are not even comparable. In other words, it is NOT the way you characterize it, as “human spaceflight vs. scientists.”
A better way to look at this is in terms of the scientific-personnel base (sort of like the industrial base in other fields). In other words, if the US decides that it wants to have a healthy and virile group of space scientists around to crunch the data from space missions, then it needs to spend some seed money to keep the community alive.
Now they could be wrong about this subject. Scientists can be a whiny bunch. But your criticism of the subject completely misses the mark.
Personally I think NASA shouldn’t fund Astronomers or any scientist unless it’s in an advisory position for either a robotic or manned space mission. Otherwise there is a conflict of interest as we have seen with earth sciences and other long term missions. I think the user agencies should be the one funding missions, this would include astronomy. It’s really the same argument as food for the poor vs. space, how is NASA supposed to resolve it. There priority is always going to be spaceflight. Congress can mandate NASA to do science but is that what we really want? I think the NSF or another science advisory board should prioritize science missions and fund them and let NASA concentrate on the space capabilities. Actually they are merging military needs into NASA spaceflight, the science committee has said that have three space programs is a waste of money. I’m hoping that Mr. Griffin will have some creative ideas.
I think space policy should be “needs” driven and the first big need is access to space period, than we could fully utilize the space station and move on to other infrastructure. Reagan was either misled or misinformed that we could support the space station with the shuttle. For the last 30 years NASA has been day dreaming for the stars and not dealing with the real issues. They have made some half hearted attempts but they have failed America in general. Congress holds equal responsibility for this failure. I think Mr. Griffin understands the needs of the country including private entrepreneurial companies.
“I prefer Human Spaceflight… ”
To prevent myself from being hypocritical (which I am at times), I must give part of the same aurgment against that as i do the people who say, “We have problems down here we need to fix first.”
The monnies for earth based science at nasa is but a drop in the bucket compared to the there over all budget. Around 400 million IIRC. about the same ratio as Nasa’s over all buget to Health, Education, and Environment.
IMHO there is one earth basesd space reaserch program that is under funded nad cutting any money to it is suiccidal, Skywatch. THis is the program that relies mainly on hobbyists to discover and track NEOs that have a potential to hit the Earth.
I don’t know the numbers today but a couple of years ago it was only 1million a year to fund it. I’m sure it would get more funding if a 10m object struck anywhere in the US.
Then there is the example from Apollo, if we didn’t have the earth based sciences funded we would not knw where to land on the moon, nor have the ability to train the astronauts in geology at earth analogs.
I prefer Human spaceflight too, but more important then that is, cheap access. And thats something we will never see developed at NASA.
“Actually they are merging military needs into NASA spaceflight…”
Huh? Can you explain what you mean and provide examples?
“Are” might be to strong but they voice there intent at the Science Committees hearing on NASA’s Fiscal Year 2006 budget on Feb. 17. There is a webcast at http://www.house.gov/science/webcast/index.htm
Activist should emphasize the importance of this merge as long as it doesn’t create scope-creep which happed to the shuttle between NASA and the Air Force.
If this isn’t the source, I may need to do some research.
From the Office of Management and Budget:
There are two problems with this bash-the-scientists quote. The first is its disingenuous attribution. The real attribution is not to OMB itself, but to a Reaganite who was working for OMB when he said it in 1985. He was using scientists as a convenient scapegoat for much larger budget problems. As they are also a convenient target for Daniel Greenberg’s formulaic scandal-mongering.
The second problem is that NASA hasn’t thought of any mission for astronauts other than science experiments, either on the space shuttle, or the space station, or in the VSE. Even if you cancelled every last NASA research grant, human spaceflight at NASA would still be science; it would just be science without scientists. It would be be science in a persistent vegetative state, which in fact is what the space station already is. It’s past time to pull the plug.
The problem with station has nothing to do with the fact that we have astronaut scientist but because we have astronaut maintenance men. I agree we should shut down station if we have no intention of fully utilizing it. However I don’t think that is the case; it is the intent of NASA to use the CEV to support IIS. Currently with two astronaut scientist, they are averaging 25 to 30 experiments. If space station were to be fully staffed at 5 to 7 people, I would expect the number of experiments to increase to 200 to 300 per expedition. The station is an asset that shouldn’t be thrown away because the cost to replace it would be very high. Another thing is not all experiments are pure academic science. Several of the experiments were for the private sector. Many of the astronauts have more scientific knowledge than some “pure” scientist and degrees to match. The world needs cheap access to LEO and beyond. Killing station and loosing a great asset will not get us to LEO faster. The development pipeline for CEV has limits that have nothing to do with money, the biggest is time. If you add a large number of people, you increase the number of management issues. R&D is a balancing act that has many unknowns.
Page 18 is the mission timeline and page 41 begins a list of science experiments for expedition 11.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/112555main_exp11_presskit.pdf
I didn’t say anything about “pure” science. I mean any kind of science. Since all human spaceflight missions in NASA’s plans are either science missions or support missions, it makes no sense to prefer human spaceflight to science.
Our space exploring is so important to understanding Earth’s past and the past of humans. There are so many unsolved questions in the world. From why is Earth the only planet with intelligent life, if there life out there, is it possible. Those answers are out there somewhere. NASA’s buget should be raised, exploring space is important. They work and train hard and some astronauts have died, that was definatly not a waste of money. The world of all science depends on learing more about why we re here on Earth. More science is out there and we will find it. People should be more supportive, why don’t people who don’t think space is important go tell a family of a dead astronaut that space travel is a waste! They will probably slam the door in yor face!!
Our space exploring is so important to understanding Earth’s past and the past of humans. There are so many unsolved questions in the world. From why is Earth the only planet with intelligent life, if there life out there, is it possible. Those answers are out there somewhere. NASA’s buget should be raised, exploring space is important. They work and train hard and some astronauts have died, that was definatly not a waste of money. The world of all science depends on learing more about why we re here on Earth. More science is out there and we will find it. People should be more supportive, why don’t people who don’t believe space travel is important go tell a family of a dead astronaut that space travel is a waste of money. They will probably slam the door in your face!