NASA

Griffin advises astronomers to avoid the kids’ table

NASA administrator Mike Griffin and the astronomical community have not had the best of relationships since Griffin became administrator nearly three years ago: astronomers are upset at budget cutbacks in various missions and research programs, while Griffin argues that such programs get plenty of funding and the real problem has been programs with unrealistic budgets (a problem he called “undercosting” two years ago.) The latest volley in this debate took place yesterday when Griffin delivered a speech at the American Astronomical Society conference in Austin, Texas, warning astronomers that there would be more problems ahead for NASA’s astronomy programs.

After some platitudes about all the great things Hubble and other NASA missions have done to advance our knowledge of the universe, Griffin focused on a couple of specific issues, starting with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). Griffin noted that the FY08 appropriations bill conference report included a provision directing NASA to study ways of delivering the AMS to the International Space Station. Griffin said that NASA has studied ways other than the shuttle to get the AMS to the station, but those alternatives would cost about $400 million. “NASA lacks the budget allocation for such a mission, so, should it be directed by Congress, it would have to ‘come out of hide’. Astrophysics hide,” he warned. Griffin said he would ask the National Academies to study the scientific priorities of NASA’s Beyond Einstein program of astrophysics missions, such as the Joint Dark Energy Mission, and compare them to the scientific priority of the AMS.

Griffin also addressed the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), which got a boost in the budget bill with additional direction to NASA to begin the “development phase” of SIM. Griffin was particularly critical of this move, saying that SIM was another flagship-class mission that the agency could not afford on top of its one current flagship mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which takes up 60 percent of the NASA astrophysics budget. “If we initiate SIM now, we will have to delay JWST or GLAST [a gamma-ray telescope scheduled for launch in 2008] or cancel Explorers to fund it,” he said, blaming “external advocacy” for the decision to increase funding for SIM in the appropriations bill. “If it stands, then the mission will be executed, and the remainder of the astrophysics portfolio will suffer. I hope this is what you want, because it appears likely to be what you will get.”

Griffin then stepped back and took on a broader issue: a lack of perceived appreciation among the astronomical community regarding the challenges NASA is facing overall. Griffin said that, while President Bush had promised an additional $1 billion for NASA over the 2005-2009 period when he announced the Vision for Space Exploration, “about two weeks after I was privately informed that I had been selected to be the new Administrator, that increase was rescinded and, further, an additional $2 billion dollar reduction incurred.” In addition, Griffin said he had to work make sure the shuttle and ISS programs were properly funded “rather than allowing a budgetary sham to be continued.” All that resulted in almost $12 billion in budget reductions and unplanned expenses from FY2005 through 2012.

Because of those budget pressures, Griffin is not sympathetic to those who complain about cutbacks in astronomy programs at the agency. “Few scientists seem to know, or care, that the human spaceflight community has lost a third of its planned flights to the ISS, that we are facing a five-year gap with no human space launch capability at all, that aeronautics is today operating at budget levels well below the historical average, or that technology development at NASA has been reduced to minimal levels,” he said. He singled out in particular criticism from the scientific community about the utility of the ISS. “Like it or not, the Space Station is a feature of American space policy. At this point, the failure to recognize that, accept it, and deal with the consequences in a mature fashion consigns one, in my mind, to the ‘kids table’, while the adults converse elsewhere.”

Griffin asked astronomers to put their own self-interest aside in favor of supporting NASA in general, arguing that such an approach would benefit them as well. “Imagine, if you will, the increased support for NASA – all of NASA – that could result if science community leaders utilized their prestige and their talent for advocacy to promote all of NASA, and not just the individual missions and portfolios of greatest interest to them. Imagine if we put aside self-interest, and all hung together.”

It’s not clear that Griffin’s request is going to win over many people in the community, though. Phil Plait of “Bad Astronomy” fame, who was in attendance at Griffin’s talk, complained about Griffin’s tone: “I must admit that his exasperation does seem a little peevish as opposed to being constructive.” Another attendee noted, “I get the strong feeling that he sees us as the enemy, as children, and as people who need to be scolded and put in our place. I can hear astronomers behind me muttering about how they can’t believe the attitude we’re being addressed with.” Universe Today did note that Griffin’s speech was followed by town hall meeting with better news for scientists, as associate administrator Alan Stern explained how the agency had adjusted its mission planning in light of the budget. Stern, though, wasn’t expecting to get more money in the near future: “[H]ope is not a strategy. We can hope that the Science Mission Directorate’s budget will be increased, but that’s not a strategy.”

71 comments to Griffin advises astronomers to avoid the kids’ table

  • reader

    even more reason to split NASA up. If projects like JIM, JWST and GLAST were out of NASA, they likely would not need to fight for the scraps off the table, left over by the elephants of ISS/STS.

  • 3...2...1...

    This Griffin fellow, he seems to have a knack for launching hit foot into his mouth.

  • canttellya

    I agree. It’s time to get the parts of NASA that actually return scientific value separated from the parts of NASA that simply waste money to pump FTEs into key congressional districts (human spaceflight).

  • madguy

    Yeah, human spaceflight is just a waste of time. It’s full of idiot engineers who aren’t smart enough to become scientists.

    Just scrap the whole thing and give it to the Russians and the Chinese.

  • blairf

    If JWST was outisde of NASA it wouldn’t be fighting for scraps – it would be dead. Five billion for five years observing, I can’t think of any other scope that gets even close in terms of cost/year.

  • Gavin

    Griffin has never struck me as a people-oriented guy. I think Griffin makes some good points but he isn’t out to win any friends. While the astronomers may feel snubbed, lest they feel unique, it should be pointed out that Griffin has snubbed people in human spaceflight as well. He is blunt, which engineers often find refreshing but many scientists do not appreciate.

    There has long been a tug of war between science and human spaceflight. Carl Sagan was a great supporter of NASA’s science efforts but he admitted that without the human element in NASA it was and is unlikely that Congress would fund the science as well as it does. I think this is evident from the points made concerning how science programs in other federal institutions are worse off.

    And while the human spaceflight may have its shortfalls, I for one would be sad to see the science side leave NASA. It is one thing to explore, but exploring is pointless without the ability to understand.

  • D. Messier

    Another attendee noted, “I get the strong feeling that he sees us as the enemy, as children, and as people who need to be scolded and put in our place. I can hear astronomers behind me muttering about how they can’t believe the attitude we’re being addressed with.”

    He seems to treat Congress (don’t need to follow silly public records laws) and the public (nothing to see here about air safety, please move along) with the same level of respect. I don’t see him changing, or Bush firing him, so we’re stuck with him for at least another year.

  • It’s kind of ironic seeing him pulling up in the wambulance over the budget, when he was the one that decided to foist a budget-busting lunar architecture on us. Had he been more realistic, and worked with what existed at the time (EELVs), we’d probably have a shuttle replacement by now. I think that others at NASA have a right to be annoyed that guys on the human spaceflight side of things are sucking all the air out of the room so they can play rocket scientist. Without manned spaceflight, it is true that things like JWST would never get funded, but that’s no excuse for the way the human spaceflight program is run.

    ~Jon

  • MarkWhittington

    I think that Griffin was only expressing an understandable frustration with the scientific community, whose political cluelessness is only matched by its sense of entitlement. The truth may hurt, but you can either deal with it or not. For decades, the scientists have chosen the latter.

  • canttellya

    Just scrap the whole thing and give it to the Russians and the Chinese.

    Nah, they won’t keep it up either. The US already is essentially paying for the Russian human space flight program, and if the US effort folds, so will the Russians. The Chinese have taken a glacial approach to human spaceflight, and without international competition they’ll lose interest too and move onto more profitable activities.

    Griffin should congratulate himself. He has set in motion the events that will end government funded manned spaceflight worldwide.

  • Go

    If JWST was out of NASA, it wouldn’t have costed $5B. The first billion was wasted inside Goddard trying to invent bizarre designs to force all the work to happen in Goddard.

    Ultimately, almost every single piece of the project that Goddard tried to build has been sent outside, except for ISIM (which is a billion dollar box to hold the instruments).

    So, Goddard wasted $2B (and running).

  • While I think Dr. Griffin’s ESAS plan has turned out to be a mistake, and he appears to go out of his way to make unnecessary enemies, it will surprise nobody here that I agree with most of what he said above. “I get the strong feeling that he sees us as the enemy, as children, and as people who need to be scolded and put in our place.” is exactly correct. While I am a fan of Hubble, JWST, and other astrophysical missions, a human future in the Solar System is far more important in every sense than anything astrophysicists could possibly deliver, save possibly advance warning of an impending nearby supernova or something similar, that would make rapid development of human spaceflight even more important. For people studying the entire universe, astrophysicists often seem to have a remakable lack of perspective. If humanity does not survive, and we won’t if we remain confined to one planet for very long, all the astrophysical knowledge in the world will be quite literally useless.

    Dr. Griffin is entirely correct that space scientists need to stop attacking human spaceflight, accept that it is an important part of the reason NASA’s non-human efforts get funded, and find ways to use human spaceflight to advance their own interests.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    a human future in the Solar System is far more important in every sense than anything astrophysicists could possibly deliver…if humanity does not survive, and we won’t if we remain confined to one planet for very long, all the astrophysical knowledge in the world will be quite literally useless.

    If NASA’s human spaceflight plans were actually moving towards a reusable, sustainable, affordable approach to human exploration and expansion into space, you might have a point. But they’re not. They’re a huge waste of money that isn’t even accomplishing its own goal.

    If we do expand out into space, then it will be private industry and the lure of wealth that takes us there. NASA should give up on human spaceflight and get out of the way of the Rutans and Bigelows and Musks of the world.

  • The People

    canttellya: If we do expand out into space, then it will be private industry and the lure of wealth that takes us there. NASA should give up on human spaceflight and get out of the way of the Rutans and Bigelows and Musks of the world.

    madguy: Yeah, human spaceflight is just a waste of time. It’s full of idiot engineers who aren’t smart enough to become scientists.

    Just scrap the whole thing and give it to the Russians and the Chinese.

    You guys rock! Furthermore, if the threat of global extinction was real or even remotely imminent, then I’m sure that the interest for government-funded human spaceflight would be much broader.

  • Aremis Asling

    I agree, private industry is poised to really make some serious advances here. However, private industry has some serious weak points. It can’t easily front multi-billion dollar operations. It hasn’t proven itself beyond a few successes (Orbital, Bigelow) and even many of the successes it does have are small victories with little more actual substance than Sputnik.

    That said if a private venture blows $1 billion dollars on anything (or a few million for that matter), it will likely see funding dry up much faster than government programs. I suspect private industry will be significantly more frugal about when, where and what they fly and will stick to the blueprints most likely to actually launch.

    Even if we can get private industry to pull it together and put something up there we’re looking at at least a decade before they’ll be doing much else other than launching satellites and ferrying astronauts and gear to the aforementioned elephantine ISS. Until there are significant hardware destinations or private craft that can head of to the Moon or beyond, I think we’re stuck with the NASA manned albatross.

    Aremis

  • canttellya: NASA should give up on human spaceflight and get out of the way of the Rutans and Bigelows and Musks of the world.

    Huh? NASA is hardly standing in the way of these folks. Bigelow aside, these folks are asking for handouts, not for NASA to get out of the way. If these folks can storm the Solar System in NASA’s absence, they can do so in the presence of anything NASA is doing now, especially if the agency is as incompentant as you claim.

    In truth, what is standing in the way of these folks is the lack of a market. Mr. Bigelow, by attempting to create a market, is the odd man out and where I would put my money.

    The People: if the threat of global extinction was real or even remotely imminent, then I’m sure that the interest for government-funded human spaceflight would be much broader.

    Unfortunately, you are not unique in burying your head in the sand.

    Aremis: Even if we can get private industry to pull it together and put something up there we’re looking at at least a decade before they’ll be doing much else other than launching satellites and ferrying astronauts and gear to the aforementioned elephantine ISS. Until there are significant hardware destinations or private craft that can head of to the Moon or beyond, I think we’re stuck with the NASA manned albatross.

    While I would phrase this more positively, I think you are exactly correct. To expect anything else is to be hopelessly optimistic — which, as I have argued before, is a consistant problem for the space community. It is past time to stop over-selling and set realistic goals — and your goals above are probably about right for the next decade.

    — Donald

  • Al Fansome

    First, this entire episode suggests there may be the basis of an alliance between commercial space advocates, and NASA space science advocates.

    Second, I too like Griffin’s straight talk — but some parts of his delivery manner were unnecessary and counterproductive. Griffin should have eliminated the scolding (e.g., suggesting they sit at the children’s table). It is also not that effective to blame the entire community for the actions of a few. Instead, you want to create an incentive for them to police themselves, and have the community focus on those who did the deed.

    I would have given them the facts — as Griffin did — that funding SIM was going to come out of the hide of their other priorities. I then would have asked them to tell me what should be cut from the $1B/year astronomical budget to pay for SIM.

    This approach would have been consistent with how Alan Stern is managing his shop — Stern is pushing the pain of mistakes towards those who made the mistake, or have allowed the mistake to happen.

    This type of approach would give the astronomical community a great incentive to start policing themselves.

    – Al

  • Al, I largely agree and I too like Dr. Stern’s management so far.

    However, if you aksthem to tell me what should be cut from the $1B/year astronomical budget to pay for SIM, they’ll turn around and say, Space Station. Since doing that would cut the one significant market space transportation has at this point in time, that should be a non-starter for us. (Reducing the Space Station’s cost by cutting the Shuttle ASAP — preferably today — and / or via COTS or COTS-like efforts should very much be on the table.)

    — Donald

  • I’ll make a few comments here about Griffin, engineers and scientists and the social interactions among them. The first time I heard Griffin speak was at WIA breakfast shortly after he became administrator. He was, among other things, quite angry about what he read in the Columbia report. He also admitted, somewhat tellingly, that he didn’t really get the cultural aspects because of a lack of knowledge of human psychology. That surprised me as he has an MBA. I didn’t know at the time that it was possible to get an MBA without much if any exposure to basic human psychology. Since then I’ve heard Griffin give other off the cuff remarks that indicate an unfortunately narrow in some ways personality.

    The same thing can be said about too many scientists and engineers, whether at NASA or in other industries. I worked for nine years at Goddard. I won’t mention which area, but the civil servant scientist at the top of the organization was viewed by many as brilliant. He was also viewed — quite accurately — as an abusive bully who did not listen to others. His behavior affected the group and its performance extremely negatively.

    Some people are trying to change NASA for the better. Even Griffin, for all his faults, is an order of magnitude improvement over Dan Goldin. I have heard nasty rumors about Goldin’s mental health. It is a matter of public record that, at his next prominent position after NASA, president of Boston University, he was paid $1.8 million dollars to go away.

    While I strongly support private efforts, we must be aware that is only one dimension of interest. If private efforts are to succeed, they must be different in other ways than NASA. If you simply take the same kinds of people, put them into the same kinds of relationships, you will see the same kinds of problems, whether it is the taxpayer or some private entity paying the bills.

    I hope this quick note makes a bit of sense.

  • I love space science as much as anyone. A solid case can be made that planetary science has special value across all the earth sciences, by giving us new perspectives where we’d had only a “sample of one.” E.g., a lot of new thinking about climatology and the evolution of atmospheres over the last generation was stimulated by comparative data from Venus and Mars, and cratering studies kick-started understanding of the “early bombardment” era here (and thus geology) as well as throughout the solar system.

    That said, I’m with blairf. NASA science last year, at $5.2B, was fairly close to the entire NSF budget at $5.91B. No one has ever convinced me that space science would receive nearly as much public support on its own, as one domain of science among others, without the “coat-tail” effect of association with manned programs that it has had within NASA. It would be impolitic for Griffin to say that flat out — part of the magic is to insist it’s all a continuum, from first flyby probe to first footprint — but to the extent he’s reminding the space scientists of that reality, I can’t disagree.

  • canttellya

    In truth, what is standing in the way of these folks is the lack of a market. Mr. Bigelow, by attempting to create a market, is the odd man out and where I would put my money.

    I agree completely. Prospects don’t look good for human spaceflight. But if there is a market, it will be the entrepreneurs who have the incentive to find it, not governments. Government funded human spaceflight, across the world, is at best nationalist pork and at worst white collar welfare.

  • canttellya : I’m glad we agree on something! However, it will be the entrepreneurs who have the incentive to find it, not governments ignores that fact that, however inefficiently, however uselessly, the government has already created a market: the Space Station. The mistake you are making is that a market has to be useful. A quick look at any modern Department Store should convince you that view is quite wrong. All that is required for a market to exist is that someone be willing to pay for its existance. The Space Station has clearly passed that test. As long as somebody, for whatever valid or invalid reason, is willing to pay for the existance of the Space Station, it is an entirely real market for supply and other support. As the largest market we have, and (as even Mr. Musk has admitted by his actions) the one most likely to provide the market to allow new (and existing) launch vehicles to succeed commercially, until and unless Mr. Bigelow succeeds on an equally large scale, the Space Station market is critical to the near-term achievement of better commercial transportation into LEO.

    — Donald

  • The People

    Government funded human spaceflight, across the world, is at best nationalist pork and at worst white collar welfare.

    It’s actually an attempt to curry national prestige in an environment that no longer exists. Forty years ago, you could impress adversaries in a non-belligerent manner by lobbing human crews into space. The world is more technically savvy now, and is not as easily impressed by grandiose displays of purposeless ambition.

  • The People: That has little or nothing to do with why human (and to a lesser extent a lot of the automated) spaceflight gets funded in the United States today. I believe the reasons are threefold, in approximate order of importance: 1). the American myth of an endless frontier combined with the natural human desire to see what’s out there; 2). the potential for competition for any resources that may be out there; and 3). geo-political concerns that encourage international cooperation on something that as seen as harmless, albeit expensive, and fulfillment of the international obligations we already have (even Mr. Bush, who is hardly an internationalist, found it unwise to abandon these).

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    As long as somebody, for whatever valid or invalid reason, is willing to pay for the existance of the Space Station, it is an entirely real market for supply and other support.

    Sorry to have to disagree again, but I don’t think the ISS is any sort of market. The US can’t wait to abandon it, the SARJ ring is stuck and there goes 50% of the electrical power, and the Russians will abandon it as soon as the US stops paying them to go there.

    The only market I can foresee right now is REALLY rich people with more money than sense wanting to go into space. And if Soyuz folds up operations, even they might not have enough money.

    I’m not optimistic that anyone will be going into space in 20 years.

  • canttellya

    1). the American myth of an endless frontier combined with the natural human desire to see what’s out there;

    You conveniently labeled this as “myth” for me, saving me the effort.

    2). the potential for competition for any resources that may be out there;

    Impractical due to transportation costs. If there was a solid 24-carat gold asteroid in a 28.5 low earth orbit, and all we had to do was launch the Shuttle and fill its payload bay with gold, we still couldn’t operate the shuttle at a profit. (that works out to $700M per flight, assuming gold at $880 per troy ounce and 55,000 lb downmass capability, which is hopelessly unrealistic)

    3). geo-political concerns that encourage international cooperation on something that as seen as harmless, albeit expensive

    And those concerns are?

    and fulfillment of the international obligations we already have

    …which we won’t be able to fulfill because the rotary joint’s broken and you won’t have the power to turn the European and Japanese labs on.

  • Umm.. Donald, given the title of this site, maybe you could slip into your list:

    N) Because a $16B/yr federal agency with well-established congressional, employee, and vendor constituencies has considerable domestic political inertia

  • anotherreader

    NASA science last year, at $5.2B, was fairly close to the entire NSF budget at $5.91B. No one has ever convinced me that space science would receive nearly as much public support on its own

    While the “tailing” argument has quite some merit, i would point out that maybe, just maybe if the predominant way of conducting space missions ( one off projects, government contracted left and right, launches noncompeted etc ) would not exist then maybe, just maybe the space science could do with far less money and still produce the same amount of value.
    Take the oh-so-great Hubble. It is possible that if Shuttle did not exist, we would have second or third generation, far improved machine up there. And the bozos who launched a multimillion dollar project with defective mirrors in the first place would be flipping burgers for the rest of their lives.

    Its actually really simple. If the science project is so expensive to conduct that it wouldnt stand on its own and wouldnt get funded, compared to the rest of the science, then it can wait until the prospect of doing it becomes cheaper. Why DOES space science need an exception ?

  • anotherreader

    in other words, i just repeated the old proposal that the time to go to mars is when National Geographic can afford to fund the mission.
    Extend this to rest of space science as well. And if Google can pay for lunar landers, then this time is not very far off.

  • canttellya: The US can’t wait to abandon it, the SARJ ring is stuck and there goes 50% of the electrical power, and the Russians will abandon it as soon as the US stops paying them to go there.

    Maybe you’re right, but I doubt it. Existing infrastructure has tremendous intertia. There are many in Congress fighting to keep the Shuttle, and by extention, the Station alive. SARJ is a technical problem that I fully expect to get fixed — I’m very surprised the Station has experienced so few. Recall how hard the Russians faught to keep Mir. If they abandon the Space Station, they will quickly try and replace it with something else. Likewise, Europe is unlikely to give up without at least trying to get some results out of their investment. Finally, without the vast cost of the Shuttle, maintaining the Space Station will seem much less expensive.

    You conveniently labeled this as “myth” for me, saving me the effort.

    Don’t underestimate the power of myths. Many societies, including our own, need nothing more to spend vast sums on economically absurd endeavors. I stated that this is the most important reason we have a civilian space program and I stand by that assessment.

    Impractical due to transportation costs. If there was a solid 24-carat gold asteroid in a 28.5 low earth orbit, and all we had to do was launch the Shuttle and fill its payload bay with gold, we still couldn’t operate the shuttle at a profit. (that works out to $700M per flight, assuming gold at $880 per troy ounce and 55,000 lb downmass capability, which is hopelessly unrealistic)

    This may be true today, but it probably won’t be in the future. First of all, I do not dispute that the Shuttle should never have been used as an operational vehicle. You should never expect that out of a first generation vehicle. Secondly, if you launched a Soyuz from the Space Station and picked it up, then reentered, maybe the economics would look a little different. (Don’t tell me the Space Station couldn’t pay for it. Of course it couldn’t, but we don’t expect a single truck cargo to pay the entire cost of the freeway network; nor do we expect all cargo carried by the system to pay the full costs. It’s the incremental cost that counts.) More importantly, the primary market for space resources — now and in the future — will be for use in space. Because of the Space Station, Mr. Musk, et al, may yet develop a cheaper way to get at your gold. Finally, it does not need to be practical for the United States to stay active just in case someone else beats us to a valuable punch. It comes back to those myths . . . we believe in competition, so we’ll make certain that we have human access to space just in case someone finds something valuable. How many times do the words “access to space” appear in Congressional debate?

    It is just those geopolitical concerns that caused the Clinton Administration to save the Space Station. The idea, which has probably been at least partially successful, was to keep Russian scientists busy on something constructive rather than developing, and trading in, new WMDs.

    Monte, I stand corrected.

    Anotherreader: It probably shouldn’t. But, without that exception, I think we would fund relatively little space science.

    Also, it is worth noting that the other three Great Observatories were launched without human spaceflight involvement. Hubble is still with us. They are not.

    — Donald

  • Dennis Wingo

    If JWST was out of NASA, it wouldn’t have costed $5B. The first billion was wasted inside Goddard trying to invent bizarre designs to force all the work to happen in Goddard.

    If Space Science is taken out of NASA GSFC will go with it to run it. Then where would you be.

  • Go

    Dennis,

    I am not sure if I am parsing your statement properly, but it sounds like you are saying that if space science is pulled out of NASA, then GSFC will end up running it. If that is what you are saying, then I do not agree.

    If space science is taken out of NASA, then ALL bidders could propose to run missions. Seeing as bidders will want to have the lowest costs, they would NOT want to procure services from NASA. In fact, there are cases where PIs have won missions, and they tend to NOT spend their budgets on NASA services. As I said, in the areas where PIs on JWST were ALLOWED to use non-NASA resources, they chose to go to the private sector.

  • Ray

    Monte: “That said, I’m with blairf. NASA science last year, at $5.2B, was fairly close to the entire NSF budget at $5.91B. No one has ever convinced me that space science would receive nearly as much public support on its own, as one domain of science among others, without the “coat-tail” effect of association with manned programs that it has had within NASA.”

    I’m not convinced of this. It seems like the other way around to me. i.e. the NASA science missions like the Mars Rovers, Cassini, the astronomy missions, etc, seem to generate most of the public excitement (such as it is) in space, whereas the NASA manned program seems to be seen (not just on this newsgroup, but in the media and in my interactions with the non-space public) as too expensive, not producing anything useful, too dangerous, too scandal-ridden (Novak, drunkenness accusations, etc), etc. Why wouldn’t the manned NASA be riding on the coattails of the science missions?

    Also, without the manned program, it seems that there are other reasons why the science missions would still get perhaps out-of-proportion budgets than relative science merit alone would indicate. For example, the industrial and technology development needs of operational space areas like the military, intelligence community, comsat industry, and NOAA might help “robotic NASA”.

    I don’t think you can ignore the recent years of NASA’s manned program raiding the robotic program, or past history (e.g. Shuttle in the 80’s) of the misbehaving manned program and its effect on robotics (to say nothing of the launch industry).

    Even if we concede for the moment that NASA robotics needs NASA manned missions, though, why would this drive us to agree at all with Griffin? Wouldn’t a manned program that stayed in its budget be more likely to support robotics? For example, a manned program that sets up some demo astrophysics robotics on the Moon would probably get Griffin’s Astrophysics audience a lot more interested. Currently I’m sure they consider ESAS a waste that isn’t going to actually produce the astrophysics promises it makes. How about a manned program that finishes and maintains the ISS with a bigger COTS but no ESAS, augmented by lots of use of relatively cheap commercial services like suborbital rides, and Bigelow modules, or a much-less-ambitious-per-mission lunar program that can be actually achieved? These might at least not wreck the robotics sides of NASA.

    I’m surprised Griffin is complaing about the remaining NASA science community when the Discovery program just selected GRAIL as their next mission, even though they hardly get any such opportunities any more with the ESAS debacle compounding the already-bad situation with ISS and Shuttle.

    I’m also surprised Griffin is trying to make the robotics folks feel better because the Shuttle folks have lost lots of missions, too. There’s an obvious reason why the Shuttle isn’t flying those missions, and it’s not because some astrophysics Shuttle program had a tragic accident revealing (what was probably obvious to folks here for decades) many unfixable flaws in this astrophysics program.

  • All that is required for a market to exist is that someone be willing to pay for its existance. The Space Station has clearly passed that test.

    No, Donald. If that’s your definition of a market, it’s a little too narrow. A market requires that someone be able to pay for it with their own money. By that test, the entire human spaceflight program, with the exception of a few tourists, fails. Until it starts to succeed on a much larger scale (which it will do when we start getting operational suborbital, and then orbital private vehicles), we’ll have a market.

  • Mark Daymont

    I just got this off spaceref.com:

    At the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Alan Stern, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington, said, “Hubble is, without exaggeration, a national treasure, and all of NASA is looking forward to seeing it receive this tune up and upgrade. I think Americans are going to be excited when they see the results of this exciting shuttle mission flower into new discoveries about the solar system and the larger universe we live in. And let’s face it; it doesn’t get much more exciting than sending a team of astronauts and sophisticated high-tech instruments to make the Hubble better than it ever was before.”

    I think that last sentence is thunderous.

  • Ray: Wouldn’t a manned program that stayed in its budget be more likely to support robotics?

    As far as I can tell, the human program at large (as opposed to individual elements in it) has stayed more-or-less within its planned budget during Dr. Griffin’s tenure — certainly, it’s done no worse than many automated missions. As Dr. Griffin points out, all of NASA’s budget was cut below what the Administration’s promised, and both the human and automated programs have had to get by with less. Rightly or wrongly, scientists want special consideration.

    For example, a manned program that sets up some demo astrophysics robotics on the Moon would probably get Griffin’s Astrophysics audience a lot more interested.

    I agree.

    How about a manned program that finishes and maintains the ISS with a bigger COTS but no ESAS, augmented by lots of use of relatively cheap commercial services like suborbital rides, and Bigelow modules, or a much-less-ambitious-per-mission lunar program that can be actually achieved?

    No debate here at all. I have always argued for use of the EELVs in the short term, rather than building yet another launch vehicle in the same class, and for COTS further out.

    These might at least not wreck the robotics sides of NASA.

    For better or worse, Dr. Griffin’s plans for the human side are getting “wrecked” at least as badly as the robotics side, or more so.

    Rand: A market requires that someone be able to pay for it with their own money.

    No, Rand, I stand by my statement. That may be ideologically desirable for you, but it is not part of any reasonable definition of “market.” According to my desk OED, the relevant definition of “market” is “a demand for a particular commodity or service.” There are no qualifiers about where that market comes from, why it exists, or who is generating the “demand.” It only requires that there be demand. More importantly, that is also true of the Space Station. The fact that there is demand is all the COTS people need; even Mr. Musk has made it clear by his actions that he cares not one whit where that demand comes from.

    If your definition were true, there would be no human commodities or services grander that what could be paid for by one person, or a small group of people. Fortunately, it is not true.

    — Donald

  • Al Fansome

    I was surprised today to find myself disagreeing with Rand.

    DONALD: All that is required for a market to exist is that someone be willing to pay for its existance. The Space Station has clearly passed that test.

    RAND: No, Donald. If that’s your definition of a market, it’s a little too narrow. A market requires that someone be able to pay for it with their own money. By that test, the entire human spaceflight program, with the exception of a few tourists, fails. Until it starts to succeed on a much larger scale (which it will do when we start getting operational suborbital, and then orbital private vehicles), we’ll have a market.

    Rand,

    I rarely find myself saying this, but I disagree.

    I looked, and I did not find any definitions of market that stated “their own money”. None of the definitions of market below does not say “their OWN money”.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market
    “In economics, a market is a social structure for exchange of rights, which enables people, firms and products to be evaluated and priced. There are two roles in markets, buyers and sellers. The definition implies that at least three actors are needed for a market to exist; at least one actor, on the one side of the market, who is aware of at least two actors on the other side whose offers can be evaluated in relation to each other. A market allows buyers and sellers to discover information and carry out a voluntary exchange of goods or services”

    By the wiki definition — the ISS crew/cargo services market is a market. There is one buyer (NASA), and 2+ sellers of ISS crew/cargo services.

    Other definitions …

    http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=market
    “the world of commercial activity where goods and services are bought and sold”

    http://www.mcwdn.org/ECONOMICS/EcoGlossary.html
    “A network in which buyers and sellers interact to exchange goods and services for money.”

    http://www.wcit.org/tradeis/glossary.htm
    “trade or traffic in a particular good or service; place where goods or services are bought and sold”

    There are many more definitions on the web. I did not see any definitions that excluded markets where the government was the customer.

    Now the implication of your clause “their own money” is you are saying that the government stole this money from the taxpayers. If you are saying that the Government has stolen the taxpayer’s money (via taxes), even this is still a market. Under this more stringent & narrow definition, it would be called a “black market”.

    However, I am guessing you really meant to say that this not a GOOD market. If so, I don’t think anybody would argue with you, since when you have one customer (whether it is a government or a company), that creates LOTS of market risk.

    But it is still a market.

    – Al

  • Al Fansome

    DONALD:

    Al, I largely agree and I too like Dr. Stern’s management so far.

    However, if you (ask) them to tell me what should be cut from the $1B/year astronomical budget to pay for SIM, they’ll turn around and say, Space Station.

    Donald,

    The space station is NOT part of the “astronomical budget”. That was my point.

    From NASA’s FY2008 budget request, the NASA astrophysics (e.g.,astronomical) budget is about $1.56B per year. It was a subset of the NASA science mission directorate budget request of ~$5.5B/year.

    That $1.5B budget includes things like

    “Astrophysics Research” (which pays the operating expenses (e.g., people) to ongoingly work on a dozen or more existing science missions, plus Research and Analysis.)

    “Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer”

    “Keck and Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer”

    “Gamma-ray Large Space Telescope”

    “Kepler”

    “James Webb Space Telescope”

    “Hubble Space Telescope”

    “SOFIA”

    “Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer”

    “Terrestrial Planet Finder”

    “Beyond Einstein”

    To clarify, if I had been in Griffin’s position, I would have broken out the $1.5B per year budget for astrophysics for the astronomical scientists in the room, and I would have said “Please look at this budget, and tell me what to cut to pay for SIM. We want your input. If you don’t give us your input, then Alan Stern and I be forced to figure out what to cut from this budget without your input. That is our job. If you don’t want to help us make this tough decision, and you are unhappy (which I don’t blame you for being), please direct your heat towards the people in this community who did an end around on your consensus priorities.”

    – Al

  • Al, thanks for the support (!), but it should be noted that the Space Station, even in its partially completed configuration, currently has at least three markets (that I can think of off the top of my head). First, and overwhelmingly dominant of course, is the government. Second, and very small so far, are the tourists, who meet any reasonable definition of a market. Third, are the scientists (however few or coerced or useless or whatever other qualifiers the cynics amongst us want to come up with) who pay or are paid to do science. A significant part of this market (or maybe a fourth market) are the experiments being done to improve space technology at large, e.g., the ongoing studies of the behavior of fluids in tanks and the recent testing of new mechanical systems for deployment of booms. I would expect “real world” testing to be a much larger market (for the Space Station or Mr. Bigelow) in the future.

  • Al, The space station is NOT part of the “astronomical budget”. That was my point.

    And, that was my point. Scientists always point to the human space program when their ambitions exceed their grasp, and blame it for many of their problems. That is one of the reasons I get so frustrated with them.

    More specifically, my prediction is that rather than do as you suggest, astrophysicists will say something to the effect of, “we want it all, so cut the complete waste of the Space Station so that we can afford it.”

    — Donald

  • Vladislaw

    “In truth, what is standing in the way of these folks is the lack of a market. Mr. Bigelow, by attempting to create a market, is the odd man out and where I would put my money.”

    Russia has said repeatedly they have a long list of people wanting to go into space and 31 million in deposits paid to Virgin Galatic says the opposite. The reason russia will stop flying tourists is not a function of demand, price, or launch capability but because under the rules of the ISS they will not have any room. So, there is demand for sub orbital, but no launchers, there is demand for orbital, but no location.

    canttellya: NASA should give up on human spaceflight and get out of the way of the Rutans and Bigelows and Musks of the world.

    I feel government is also a problem but not in the sense you state. If the government, which often, if not always, operates against the economic interests it profeses to support could do a lot more then it is now.

    Zero corporate taxes for space derived profits.
    Rapid depreciation for tax purposes.
    Grants & Centential Prizes.
    Low interest long term loans.
    Service contracts.
    Buying seats into space on price per ride.

    here are just a few things the federal government could do to encourage more private space activity.

  • reader

    Donald, of the “ISS markets” you listed, tourism market exists independently of ISS, and so does the LEO science. I would guess that more science is done even now on LEO outside the ISS than inside the ISS.

    Look, if ISS were to fall out of the sky tomorrow ( and when it does, in 2015 ) the world is not going to end. It may be a minor setback, but there will be likely more sighs of reliefs than crying.

    Yes, ISS is a market, sort of, but for the tens of billions invested, its hardly worth it.

  • reader

    I’d even go as far as to say that Google is planning to create way more relevant market with few tens of millions.

  • Vladislaw

    spaceflight gets funded in the United States today. I believe the reasons are threefold, in approximate order of importance: 1). the American myth of an endless frontier combined with the natural human desire to see what’s out there; 2). the potential for competition for any resources that may be out there; and 3). geo-political concerns that encourage international cooperation on something that as seen as harmless, albeit expensive, and fulfillment of the international obligations we already have

    You failed to mention military applications, which in my opinion is number one. Who ever controls the “high ground” controls the battle. That is why the military pushed for fundings EELVs and the fast reaction programs.

    2). the potential for competition for any resources that may be out there;

    Impractical due to transportation costs. If there was a solid 24-carat gold asteroid in a 28.5 low earth orbit, and all we had to do was launch the Shuttle and fill its payload bay with gold, we still couldn’t operate the shuttle at a profit. (that works out to $700M per flight, assuming gold at $880 per troy ounce and 55,000 lb downmass capability, which is hopelessly unrealistic)

    I believe you are incorrect in your assumption here. You are ASSUMING the gold actually has to be brought back to the ground, that is incorrect. Gold mines are worth millions NOT because of the gold you have mined, but the potential.
    You never mentioned PROPERTY RIGHTS, who EXACTLY would OWN this rock of gold therefore having the mining rights to actually extract the gold?
    As soon as someone got to actually CLAIM the rock and it was RECOGNIZED as a LEGAL mining claim it would become an INSTANT asset in your accounting books. You would beable to draw loans against it, raise your stock value, et cetera.

    That is the NUMBER ONE reason there is not a rush to the moon or mars. Just as soon as property rights are finally established, billionaires will be flocking to own a piece of it.

    What America has to do is send an astronaut named G. A. Custer to those blackhills surrounding Shackelton crater and shout “GOLD”. Then we can figure out property rights later.

    This what I feel the republicans are up to with the sudden drive to the moon, you can see it in who the republicans honor:
    http://www.lunarlandowner.com/news.htm

    “We want to congratulate Dennis Hope, founder of the Lunar Embassy, for the wonderful acknowledgement he has received from the Congresss of the United States. Dennis Hope has been named co-chairman of the Republican Congressional Business Advisory Council. He has also been issued the highest honor the National Republican Congressional Committee has, the prestigious Republican Gold Medal.”

    Hope has been selling deeds to lunar land for 20 years, now the republicans honor him???? what is up with that? And now the republicans want to goto the moon with land deeds in hand?

  • Vadislaw: So, there is demand for sub orbital, but no launchers, there is demand for orbital, but no location.

    Very interesting point. Both of these problems are getting fixed.

    Regarding property rights, I think that issue is over-emphasized. I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of private property rights on the moon and elsewhere (as long as there are also protected areas), but plenty of mining on Earth goes on in public lands and lack of property rights on the high seas does not seem to put much of a dent in off-shore oil drilling. If a valuable resource is found, a way around any property rights issues is likely to be found.

    Reader: if ISS were to fall out of the sky tomorrow ( and when it does, in 2015 ) the world is not going to end. It may be a minor setback

    While neither of us can prove our positions on this, I disagree. With the possible exception of Mr. Biglow, there is no potential near-term market for launch vehicles with the scale of the Space Station. That market is vital for the entreprenurial launch vehicles that might have a real chance of lowering costs — look at where SpaceX, et al, are putting most of their effort. Without that market, they won’t succeed until the market is duplicated — which, however wasteful building the Space Station has been, will be far more wasteful than using something that is already in orbit. In short, it would be a major setback. As I argued above, I think it very unlikely, politically, that the Station will be allowed to fall out of orbit in 2015, whatever people are saying now in efforts to get someone else to pay the bills.

    The google market is exactly one launch.

  • “Carl Sagan was a great supporter of NASA’s science efforts but he admitted that without the human element in NASA it was and is unlikely that Congress would fund the science as well as it does.”

    With all due respect to the late, great Dr. Sagan, he was just dead wrong (no pun intended) on this.

    If space science was riding human space flight’s coattails, then the NASA budgets for each should move in tandem. But the budget history does not support this. The human space flight and space science budgets often, maybe even usually, move in different directions. For example, during the latter half of the 90s and through the early 00s, the space science budget grew substantially on the back of the astrobiology revolution while the human space flight budget was held flat or declining. In another example, the largest (adjusted for inflation) space science flagship missions, the Voyager spacecraft (originally Mariner 11 and 12) and the Viking landers, were started well after Apollo funding peaked in the mid-60s. The next largest space science flaship missions, Cassini and the Great Observatories, were begun in the 1970s and early 80s, when the human space flight budget was restricted to Shuttle development and flights.

    Sagan’s argument is also contradictory to the budgetary evidence in other nation’s space programs. If space science rode human space flight’s coattails, then space science should be a smaller component of foreign space agency budgets than human space flight. But it’s not. For example, the European Space Agency (ESA) spends about the same amount — 400-500 Euros each — on both human space flight and space science. When the spending of individual national space programs in Europe are added to these totals, then the total European spending on space science is actually bigger than total European spending on human space flight.

    Sagan’s argument also ignores the longer record of history in which most human civilizations have spent some small but significant fraction of their wealth trying to answer questions about the nature of the universe beyond Earth in the absence of any human space flight program. As I mentioned in another thread, whether it was Stone Age observatories like Stonehenge, the collective minds of ancient schools of Greek philosophy, the court astronomers of medieval China and Islam, the Medicis and other rich Renaissance sponsors of astronomers like Galileo, or some few billions of dollars of national wealth today, humanity has always a small fraction of its societal wealth trying to answer questions of astronomical significance, independent of and in the absence of any human space flight efforts or activities.

    Sagan’s argument about the relationship between human space flight and space science funding seems obvious, but it doesn’t bear up under the evidence in the NASA budget, in the budgets of other national civil space programs, or in the history of of the astronomical sciences.

    FWIW…

  • Who ever controls the “high ground” controls the battle.

    Other than for surveillance and communications (neither requiring manned presence), space offers no advantage corresponding to those of high ground in traditional warfare. Nobody has to “charge uphill” against your space fortress, and its defenders aren’t hurling spears or shooting arrows “downhill.” The same geometry and physics that lets something (or someone) in orbit scan the globe on a predictable schedule makes that something (or someone) a target from wide areas of the globe on a predictable schedule.

    The high ground metaphor played on false analogies to air power and gut-level anxiety about “danger from above” fifty years ago, in the post-Sputnik panic, and it still does today. It has almost nothing to do with the realities of what military activities do and don’t make sense in space.

  • “the scientific community, whose political cluelessness is only matched by its sense of entitlement.”

    Yet again, Mr. Whittington paints a whole group of individuals with one ugly color without any basis for doing so.

    Where is there evidence that the entire “scientific community” has a “sense of entitlement”? Or is politically clueless?

    Please, Mr. Whittington, if you can’t engage in an argument without throwing unsubstantiated slurs against whole groups of people, then keep your thoughts to yourself.

    Ugh…

    On the subject of entitlement, I would point out that practically everything in NASA’s space science programs is competed — from contractors, instruments, and principal investigators for flagship missions; to entire missions and their principal investigators and university/industry/NASA teams in the competed mission lines; to technology development contracts and grants; to science research grants. These are not entitlements — in fact, the very high degree of competition in these programs is the opposite of entitlement.

    In NASA’s human space flight programs, however, huge amounts of work go uncompeted and sole-sourced — from the Ares I first stage and other major systems; to various ISS operations and components; to the Space Shuttle operations contract; even some technology development work like space suits. The total lack of competition in these areas turns these human space flight activities into de facto entitlements. In fact, given the extent to which ESAS was technically compromised, one could make the argument that the entire Constellation effort has become one big entitlement to keep the Shuttle workforce fully employed.

    Setting aside competition, another way to identify an entitlement is by lack of product. And in terms of the product that NASA is supposed to produce — pushing back the frontiers of space exploration — the space science programs have been much, much more productive than the human space flight programs. The human space flight programs have not left Earth orbit since the early 1970s, and in the same time, the planetary science program alone has visited every major body and many minor bodies in our solar system.

    NASA human space flight does not have to be run this way. If we want to fix entitlement programs at NASA, we should look to the huge sole-sourced, unproductive, and technically compromised activities in the $10 billion human space flight program, not the highly competed and highly productive activities in the $4 billion space science program.

    FWIW…

  • Anonymous: The human space flight and space science budgets often, maybe even usually, move in different directions. . . . during the latter half of the 90s and through the early 00s, the space science budget grew substantially on the back of the astrobiology revolution while the human space flight budget was held flat or declining.

    Sagan has it right in this. The forces tend to move in opposite directions because, rightly or wrongly, the powers that be in both NASA and the government give priority to human spaceflight. When a new human vehicle is needs to be developed, that naturally impacts other parts of NASA. When the human infrastructure is operating on a more-or-less fixed cost, other budgets are allowed to expand.

    In this case, I think you need to look beyond the numbers and listen to what the majority of the politicians who are responsible for space getting funded are saying. There are exceptions, but I think the most motivated — and therefore the most politically successful — usually are advocating human spaceflight. In the absence of this essentially ideological (or mythological) support for human spaceflight, I think a lot of, though certainly not all of, the funding for automated spaceflight would eventually trickle away. Put another way, nobody is going to fund a $5 billion Mars sample return mission unless a case (however weak) can be made that it prepares for future human missions.

    I don’t think other nation’s experiences are entirely relevant here, since it is we who have the “infinite frontier” ethic and mythology and it is also we who “drive” space development. The Russians, who to a significant degree share this myth, likewise consider human spaceflight of great importance. If it were up to many Europeans, they would probably spend next to nothing on human spaceflight; they are keeping their options open in case the US and Russia are on to something — they don’t want to be left behind, even if they see the activity as of limited utility.

    Sagan’s argument also ignores the longer record of history in which most human civilizations have spent some small but significant fraction of their wealth trying to answer questions about the nature of the universe beyond Earth in the absence of any human space flight program.

    Here, I think you are dead wrong. Most civilizations have seen answering these questions and human expeditions as synonymous — even if they could, they would never have considered not going themselves. To use one of the greatest scientific expeditions of history as an example: Charles Darwin’s (military) ship was mapping the world’s oceans for military and commercial reasons having to do with the greater glory and expansion of the British Empire, and the science, while certainly seen as important at the time, was still incidental. Darwin’s expedition never would have been financed in the absence of the other motivations. Likewise, even if Darwin could have done so (and, given British faith in technology at the time, he certainly could have thought of the idea!), he would never have sent robots to attempt the observation that resulted in the theory of Evolution, nor would they have succeeded if he had. The question is not whether we would be spending anything on space science in the absence of the potential for ultimate colonization, it’s whether we’d be spending what we do, and I think the clear answer is no.

    It’s the “final frontier” that drives NASA’s budget, not science per se, and scientists ignore that political reality at their peril.

    — Donald

  • anonymous, I didn’t intend the “coattail” metaphor to imply either a proportional or a monotonic relationship. I meant it as it’s used in politics, when e.g. a party’s legislative candidates are said to benefit from the coattails of a successful candidate for president or governor: the latter may not in fact be more important — but focuses attention, brings more voters to the polls, “enlarges the pie.” . The relationship is diffuse and hard to measure — but I still think it’s there.

    Nor is it just me and Sagan: I’ve been talking to space scientists about this since the 1970s, and — even when they’re aggrieved (as they often have every right to be) about budget impacts originating on the manned side, many have acknowledged that in the absence of manned programs, the scale of space science would be much smaller.

    Your eloquent historical tour of the value of science and knowledge is preaching to the choir: For myself, I’d still want all the space science we can possibly get if there had never been manned spaceflight. Still less did I advance the point to imply that space scientists should shut up and be thankful for what they get.

    I do think it’s undeniable that that space science budgets leaped many-fold from the “Palomar and sounding rockets” level of the mid-1950s through the 1960s, to a level that only high-energy physics had seen until then. Some was Ranger & Surveyor, directly linked to prospective manned missions — but the rest, I think, became politically/financially possible only with the vastly expanded manned spaceflight budget as “cover.”

    To be blunt, neither the lay public nor many legislators have ever been all that clear about what’s pure science and what’s “preparing the way for our astronauts.” And on balance, I’m pretty sure space science has benefited more from that vagueness than it has suffered.

  • reader

    That market is vital for the entreprenurial launch vehicles that might have a real chance of lowering costs
    I think its you who is overemphazising. SpaceX would exist with and without ISS. Musk himself has said that Dragon would exist without COTS, but would just take more time.
    Anyone serious in this game knows that government cannot be relied on and any business plans have to close without it. Government incentives are just a bonus.
    Tourism, both orbital and suborbital will thrive happily without a destination to go to. Destination, again, is just a bonus.

    The google market is exactly one launch.
    Wrong on so many levels. First, even for the Prize attempt itself there will likely be more than one launch. And when/if the prize has been won, it wont stop there. Suborbital companies didnt say “oh well” and pack their bags after SS1 made its second flight.
    If you have put a team and technology together capable of pulling off lunar rovers with reasonable price point, you will get lots of interests by lots of parties after that.

  • Allen Thomson

    > to a level that only high-energy physics had seen until then.

    And HEP itself benefited greatly from its association with nuclear physics, which in turn had benefited from a certain well-appreciated practical application. Other examples of the coat-tail effect are easy to find.

  • Vladislaw

    “Other than for surveillance and communications (neither requiring manned presence), space offers no advantage corresponding to those of high ground in traditional warfare.”

    Actually those are both reasons in the terrestrial sense as well, historically high ground has ALWAYS offered advantages to BOTH surveillance and communications. From just laying on a hilltop and reporting troop movements and to relaying messages with mirrors, smoke, flags, semiphores etc. so hills get rushed NOT only because of the troops there shooting arrows downhill BUT because it IS the high ground. High ground can be important tactically, operationally, or strategically. As space is the ultimate high ground it is Strategically important. You say “Other than for surveillance and communications” for high ground to be important that is all it has to be. Castles would get build on high ground FOR those two reasons, shooting arrows downhill was just a side benifit. So to casually say other than is not really reflective of how much that high ground actually IS important to the modern warfighter.

    The poster I was responding to in that post was not refering to MANNED space flight but to space flight in general, and he laid out 3 points of importance, I mearly responded saying I think space flight in general is most important to the military for the high ground aspect then the reasons listed.

  • “Sagan has it right in this. The forces tend to move in opposite directions…”

    The logic here is contradictory.

    Sagan argued that the space science budget wouldn’t be as big as it is without a big human space flight budget — that a larger human space flight budget results in a larger space science budget.

    You’re arguing (as do I) that the two budgets tend to move in opposite directions — that if, anything, they compete for dollars. When one goes up, the other tends to go down or stay flat, and vice-versa.

    This argument, which is born out by the budget evidence, is at odds with Sagan’s argument. Bigger human space flight budgets result in either bigger or smaller space science budgets. We can’t have it both ways.

    I’m not sure which side you intended to argue, but so far, you’re siding with me and against the good Dr. Sagan. (Whom, by the way, I have great respect for as a scientist, educator, and advocate. His analysis of policy and politics, however…)

    “In this case, I think you need to look beyond the numbers and listen to what the majority of the politicians who are responsible for space getting funded are saying. There are exceptions, but I think the most motivated — and therefore the most politically successful — usually are advocating human spaceflight. In the absence of this essentially ideological (or mythological) support for human spaceflight, I think a lot of, though certainly not all of, the funding for automated spaceflight would eventually trickle away.”

    In the absence of some evidence that a “majority of the politicians” ascribe to your “ideological (or mythogical) support for human space flight”, this is little more than a perception, and I really can’t argue with a perception.

    I will say that, to the extent that humanity or Americans share a frontier myth, it has little to do with the political or budgetary support for human space flight.

    In human space flight, the reality is that past programs have been funded largely on the basis of external, fear-based, foreign policy rationales. After Sputnik, the missile gap, and Gagarin, Kennedy asked for a demonstrable way to beat the Soviets in space and Apollo was the result. After Salyut and Mir, Reagan similarly approved Space Station Freedom. The Clinton Administration saved the Space Station from Congressional cancellation by bringing a post-Cold War Russia into the partnership in an effort to keep their aerospace engineers from designing missiles for our enemies. And today, Congressmen representing NASA human space flight centers, like Hutchison, Nelson, and Weldon, are all resorting to false arguments about non-existent Chinese human lunar efforts or dependence on Russia in a time of potential changes to U.S./Russian relations to prop up the arguments for Constellation funding. These are all very concrete rationales — driven by international competition or other foreign fears — for human space flight. There’s no mythology at work.

    As I’ve said in older threads, the history of human exploration and settlement — from the Viking Ericssons escaping political persecution in Norway, to Polo or Columbus seeking trade routes to riches in the East Indies, to Puritans and other religious groups escaping persecution in the Old World, to a Cold War competition to beat another nuclear-tipped ICBM-equipped nation to the Moon — is largely driven by very concrete needs related to greed or fear. We’re smart, risk-averse monkeys. We don’t expend limited resources or risk our lives exploring new worlds out of some shared mythology. We explore because we have no choice (fear) or because we expect an outsized reward in return (greed).

    We may wrap our exploration efforts in a frontier mythology to make ourselves feel better — which probably makes for good political speeches. But that’s not the reason we or our leaders approve, fund, or undertake specific exploration activities (or any science activities, coattail or not).

    I’m not sure any of that is what you mean when you refer to a frontier mythology, but that’s my 2 cents on the term.

    “Put another way, nobody is going to fund a $5 billion Mars sample return mission unless a case (however weak) can be made that it prepares for future human missions.”

    But no one, at least to my knowledge, is making the argument that Mars sample return is preparation for future human missions. Mars sample return is all about ALH84001 and confirming or refuting whether there is geological evidence for past life on Mars. Per the VSE and various NRC reports, human Mars missions would require a different set of robotic precursors.

    “Here, I think you are dead wrong. Most civilizations have seen answering these questions and human expeditions as synonymous — even if they could, they would never have considered not going themselves. To use one of the greatest scientific expeditions of history as an example: Charles Darwin’s (military) ship was mapping the world’s oceans for military and commercial reasons having to do with the greater glory and expansion of the British Empire, and the science, while certainly seen as important at the time, was still incidental.”

    As much as I love the Beagle/Darwin story, it’s not terribly relevant to this argument. We’re talking about the space sciences (not terrestrial biology), which at that time was represented by astronomy. And the British Empire, various churches in the British Empire, and rich individuals in the British Empire invested considerable resources in astronomical research (Armagh Observatory, Dunsink Observatory, Edinburgh City Observatory, Edinburgh Royal Observatory, Greenwich Royal Observatory, Kondaikanal Solar Observatory, Markree Observatory, Sydney Observatory, the position of Royal Astronomer, etc.), independent of the voyage of the Beagle or other terrestrial exploration activities (and certainly in the absence of any human space flight activity).

    There are certainly examples like the Beagle and Darwin of exploration and science benefitting each other. (Various expeditions to view eclipses are another example from astronomy in roughly the same time period.) But that doesn’t mean that exploration and science are synonymous, in fact or in the minds of those decisionmakers that approve and fund them

    “Likewise, even if Darwin could have done so (and, given British faith in technology at the time, he certainly could have thought of the idea!), he would never have sent robots to attempt the observation that resulted in the theory of Evolution, nor would they have succeeded if he had.

    I need to get back to the humans versus robots debate in the other thread, but we shouldn’t confuse a discussion about whether human space flight funding does or does not drive space science funding (arguably a matter of fact) with a discussion about the relative benefits of and priority between the two.

    “The question is not whether we would be spending anything on space science in the absence of the potential for ultimate colonization, it’s whether we’d be spending what we do, and I think the clear answer is no.”

    The historical evidence, even for that most colonizing of the human societies, the British Empire, shows otherwise. We’re curious monkeys and we’ve almost always spent small but significant resources satisfying our curiousity about the universe beyond Earth, largely independent of any exploration activities that we do or don’t undertake.

    “It’s the “final frontier” that drives NASA’s budget, not science per se, and scientists ignore that political reality at their peril.”

    Neither a frontier mythology nor science drive NASA’s overall budget.

    NASA’s human space flight activities are largely driven by real or perceived international fears. NASA’s space science activities are largely driven by the questions and priorities of its constituent communities.

    NASA’s total budget is driven by the interaction and sum of those (and other, like the state of the aviation industry or the needs of global climate research) factors.

    FWIW…

  • Vladislaw

    “Regarding property rights, I think that issue is over-emphasized. I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of private property rights on the moon and elsewhere (as long as there are also protected areas), but plenty of mining on Earth goes on in public lands and lack of property rights on the high seas does not seem to put much of a dent in off-shore oil drilling.”

    Actually the issue is EXACTLY the opposite it is NEVER emphasized, nor even mentioned in congress or the media. If mining takes place on public lands as soon as a reporter finds out it ends and penalties are handed out, from a slap on the wrist to major losses. A nation’s property rights ends at 12 miles, so there is a LEGAL precident for drilling offshore and even then the parent company has to pay taxes to some nation for that right. Do you honestly think someone sets up a billion dollar drilling rig with absolutely NO legal leg to stand on? Or they drive into a national park and start chopping down trees?

    There is no established rights for any government or individual regarding rocks in space but exactly the opposite, no one is allowed anything. That is why I find it so fastinating that the republicans would honor Dennis Hope who has been selling lunar land titles.

    You said you are in favor of property rights? Who’s? Chinese? Russian? American? As a planet we have to come to terms with it.

    NO company is going to drop a dollar of PRIVATE money in mining equipment on land they are unsure of because of court costs. If America said “we will recognize the mineral rights to any company that does this ______ and will be considered as the owners of this lunar land X by Y”

    You MIGHT actually get some company to consider it. Do it like the railroad, every alternating square mile or something.

  • First of all, I agree that I left out the military, but I was talking about civilian spaceflight.

    Bigger human space flight budgets result in either bigger or smaller space science budgets. We can’t have it both ways.

    No, the relationship is not that simple. It is true that when NASA’s budget is essentially fixed, the science budget temporarily declines when we are developing a shuttle or an Ares-1, but that does not obviate the larger political piucture that we would not be spending as much in general on automated spaceflight if it were not seen as part of a larger effort to eventually explore the Solar System in person. I agree with both you and Dr. Sagan, I just think Dr. Sagan came to the more correct conclusion, and you the less correct one.

    is that past programs have been funded largely on the basis of external, fear-based, foreign policy rationales

    Apollo? Yes. The Shuttle? Partially so. Space Station? Less so. The VSE? Somewhat, but not for the most part. I don’t disagree with your analysis, but your conclusion is only partially correct. Why are so many of us scared the Chinese will beat us in space? Why do we care? Partially, it’s the military high ground, but mostly it’s because we’re afraid they’ll beat us to an ill-defined “the future” and because they’ll have “access to space” and we won’t. We want access to space because we see it as similar to access to the high seas, that is, as a way to get somewhere that we expect to be valuable. Even in the case of Apollo, listen to the retoric: “this new ocean.” Sure, it was a politically useful phrase to Kennedy at the time, but only because we believed it. Why the enduring popularity of Star Trek and similar fictions? Out culture sees space as a place eventually to be colonized, which is why much of the civilian space program exists. If we didn’t, it wouldn’t.

    We’re smart, risk-averse monkeys. We don’t expend limited resources or risk our lives exploring new worlds out of some shared mythology.

    In that case, we’re building the Space Station and going back to the moon for smart, risk-averse reasons, and we’re not wasting resources and lives doing it, and there’s no problem. You can’t have it both ways, either!

    We may wrap our exploration efforts in a frontier mythology to make ourselves feel better — which probably makes for good political speeches. But that’s not the reason we or our leaders approve, fund, or undertake specific exploration activities (or any science activities, coattail or not).

    You are very wrong, here. Doing that makes us feel better because we believe it. And, since we believe it, we do it, or try to.

    A Mars sample return mission — even a hundred of them — are not capable of answering your stated question. More importantly, rover scientists, starting with Dr. Steven Squyres, repeatedly state that their motivation is to prepare for human exploration — when asked, it is a principle argument they use to justify the expense. I rest my case.

    — Donald

  • Okay, I just over-stated my own case. I should have said, “when asked, it’s one of the principle arguments they use to justify the expensive, and it’s presented front-and-center.”

    — Donald

  • D. Messier

    Basically, Griffin told these guys that they must bear the brunt of The Decider’s erratic actions: putting forth a bold plan to send humans to the moon and Mars followed by a complete flip flop on promised funding increases. He (Griffin) doesn’t care that they think this is as stupid as it sounds; the Decider cares even less. And, in that favorite phrase that a certain NASA blogger throws at people constantly, they should just sit down and shut up.

    That’s my interpretation. If I’m reading this correctly. One wonders why Griffin even bothered to show up to tell them this face to face. A memo would have been a lot simpler.

  • “that does not obviate the larger political piucture that we would not be spending as much in general on automated spaceflight”

    Be careful — we shouldn’t mix the terms automated space flight and space science. The two are not synonymous.

    “if it were not seen as part of a larger effort to eventually explore the Solar System in person”

    Where is the evidence for this “larger political picture”? You have more clearly defined the connection you’re trying to make between human space flight and space science (thank you), but you’re still providing no evidence to support it. Where is this connection reflected in the budget data? Or in policy documents? Or in history?

    “Why are so many of us scared the Chinese will beat us in space? Why do we care?”

    It depends on what you mean by “space”, but if you’re referring to the false arguments about a non-existent Chinese human lunar effort, the past couple years of Constellation budget results indicate that not many of us (myself included) are scared of that threat.

    For the record, I am worried about other Chinese military space capabilities — and even more worried about other non-space Chinese issues — but those have nothing to do with human space flight.

    “Partially, it’s the military high ground, but mostly it’s because we’re afraid they’ll beat us to an ill-defined “the future” and because they’ll have “access to space” and we won’t. We want access to space because we see it as similar to access to the high seas, that is, as a way to get somewhere that we expect to be valuable.”

    Access to space has little to do with the arguments being made about the non-existent Chinese human lunar effort. The Chinese already have access to space and so will we, even after Shuttle’s retirement. No one is arguing that with respect to the Chinese.

    (Nelson and Weldon have argued that we shouldn’t be dependent on the Russians for ISS access post-Shuttle given potential future changes in U.S./Russian relations. But that’s not an argument about space access generally or about the Chinese specifically.)

    The argument being made by the likes of Griffin, Hutchison, Nelson, and Weldon about Chinese human space flight is that the Chinese are going to beat us back to the Moon. And that’s a specific argument about a concrete threat — not a general argument about an “ill-defined future” or the unknown promise of the “high seas”.

    It’s a false argument, of course, because there is no physical evidence (and a lot of contrary written evidence) for a Chinese human lunar effort. And that’s why few outside a small circle of Congressmen and managers representing NASA’s human space flight centers are buying into it.

    We can wax poetic until we’re blue in the face about the unknowable promise of new frontiers. But the harsh reality is that won’t don’t apply substantial additional resources to exploring or accelerating those frontiers in the absence of a very concrete and real threat or opportunity.

    “In that case, we’re building the Space Station and going back to the moon for smart, risk-averse reasons, and we’re not wasting resources and lives doing it, and there’s no problem. You can’t have it both ways, either!”

    Where have I said that sending humans back to the Moon or building and operating space stations are a waste of resources or lives? I said no such thing in this thread, and have repeatedly stated that I support a focused, well-managed, and efficient human space flight program for the purposes of exploration elsewhere in this forum.

    I am highly critical of the way in which we have pursued the second U.S. space station and are so far pursuing the second U.S. human lunar program. But that criticism comes a member of the loyal opposition who supports the programs’ overall goals, if not their implementation. Please don’t confuse the two.

    “Even in the case of Apollo, listen to the retoric: “this new ocean.” Sure, it was a politically useful phrase to Kennedy at the time, but only because we believed it.”

    Plenty of editorials from that period show that not all of us, maybe even most of us, “believed it”.

    And political rhetoric is not the same thing as policy justification. Although Kennedy and his speech writers used soaring rhetoric to sell the program, that rhetoric is not the rationale for why Apollo was started and funded. Again, the policy documents show that Kennedy asked a team led by Johnson for a way to “demonstrably” beat the Soviets in space. That team came back with a list of options, and a human lunar landing was at the top of the list.

    “Why the enduring popularity of Star Trek and similar fictions? Out culture sees space as a place eventually to be colonized, which is why much of the civilian space program exists. If we didn’t, it wouldn’t.”

    Science fiction is the butt of jokes in political rhetoric and policy arguments. I’ve never seen it used as a rationale or justification for real-world space programs, at least by anyone in position to make decisions about them.

    “You are very wrong, here. Doing that makes us feel better because we believe it. And, since we believe it, we do it, or try to.”

    There may be an argument that we sustain some minimal level of human space flight activity (e.g., Shuttle flights) because it’s embedded in our national image — we’d feel a little less American if we didn’t have some human presence flying the flag and eagle in space.

    But it’s a very naive conclusion at odds with handfuls of policy documents, years of budgets, and centuries of history that specific exploration activities are approved, funded, and undertaken because they make “us feel better”. That’s simply not what is running through the minds of decisionmakers like the Ericssons, the Spanish crown, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton/Gore, etc. when they have funded or undertaken specific new exploration efforts.

    “More importantly, rover scientists, starting with Dr. Steven Squyres, repeatedly state that their motivation is to prepare for human exploration — when asked, it is a principle argument they use to justify the expense.”

    That may be Dr. Squyres’ deep personal interest in what he does. But it is not the reason the science community assigned a priority to his rovers, or the reason that the managers and political decisionmakers above Dr. Squyres funded his rovers. We shouldn’t confuse personal interests with budget rationales.

    FWIW…

  • “anonymous, I didn’t intend the “coattail” metaphor to imply either a proportional or a monotonic relationship. I meant it as it’s used in politics, when e.g. a party’s legislative candidates are said to benefit from the coattails of a successful candidate for president or governor: the latter may not in fact be more important — but focuses attention, brings more voters to the polls, “enlarges the pie.” . The relationship is diffuse and hard to measure — but I still think it’s there.”

    Other than to point out that the budget data and policy history don’t support a positive relationship between human space flight funding and space science funding, I can’t really argue with your perception that there is a such a relationship. There’s little I can do to argue against something that is “diffuse and hard to measure”.

    That said, even if I shared the perception, I would trust some common-sense tests more than the perception. For example, does it really make sense that, 40-odd years after Apollo, our nation’s only actual human space exploration effort, that space science is still riding the coattails of human space flight? Or does it make more sense that space science and the answers it provides have value to our society independent of human space flight?

    “I do think it’s undeniable that that space science budgets leaped many-fold from the “Palomar and sounding rockets” level of the mid-1950s through the 1960s, to a level that only high-energy physics had seen until then. Some was Ranger & Surveyor, directly linked to prospective manned missions”

    I partly buy into this specific argument — that without the need to gather certain data and undertake certain test before Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, we would not have accelerated our automated space capabilities as fast as we did. Even then, though, the root cause for the acceleration of these capabilities is Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, not Apollo or human space flight per se. And I think it requires a huge leap of logic to argue that the space science budget is still riding the coattails of Apollo some 40-odd years later.

    FWIW…

  • I agree with Griffin that the constant drum beat from space scientists that Congress should fund them more and manned space flight less, and the counterpoint (more contretemps) of manned spaceflight visions swamping space science budgets has resulted in somewhat less for each group than a front unified in support of each others’ vision. Clearly Griffin is not the man to create such a broad coalition. That doesn’t make the goal less sensible.

    Monte, re: nebulousity of space science benefiting space scientists: Human spaceflight has few remaining fig leaves that make the public think billions sending people into space is worth something. March to find life on Mars seems to excite people. Take away the science and wonder of space and you have to have the vision of the desert spawning a new Las Vegas. That is a little too unreasonable in this age and day. We have become Old World in our thinking. Darwin we support. Lewis and Clark we don’t. So I would contend that stripping away the science figleaf for space and putting astrophysics and planetary science into NSF and both would lose funding–more than NSF would gain.

    This fundamental poverty of both space communities suggests to me that they should start trying to get government out of the way of private industry providing a path to orbit.

  • reader

    taking existing planetary science and astrophysics into NSF for example would be a good first step in “getting the government out of the way”
    try to imagine how both remaining respective parties, space science people in NSF and the others remaining in NASA would run their business in such event, and you’ll see what i mean,

  • chance

    “Other than for surveillance and communications (neither requiring manned presence), space offers no advantage corresponding to those of high ground in traditional warfare. ”

    You left out GPS, which I would argue has revolutionized warfare. This corresponds to the corresponds on the “high ground” directing his forces.

  • anon: as always you make strong points, and (as often before) have prompted me to look harder at my own views.

    My coattails trope does indeed risk the “genetic fallacy” – i.e., assuming that because space science historically became Big Science at a time when over-all space budgets were expanding primarily for manned spaceflight, that relationship still holds.

    Or does it make more sense that space science and the answers it provides have value to our society independent of human space flight?

    I’ve tried to make it clear that I couldn’t agree more with this. Again, I myself would value planetary probes, space astronomy, etc. just as much even if some hyper-Van Allen belt 50 miles up had ruled out manned spaceflight forever. I am aware that some m.s. advocates use the “bucks follow Buck Rogers” argument tactically and instrumentally — as it were, to put space science in its place — but please don’t lump me with them.

    FWIW, my true preference would be to see the entire manned vs science “debate” (mostly a ritual dance by now) become a historical curiosity through CATS that would permit an abundance of both. If I thought we could declare a 20-year moratorium on all manned and scientific missions, redirect the money from both to R&D and flight testing with no payload but cinder blocks, and lower $/kg to LEO in 2028 by 90%, I’d go for it in a heartbeat.

  • Vladslaw, chance: I erred in thinking Donald Robertson’s original listing of “motives” had been within the context of manned space activity, and failed to make clear that I was going off on a tangent.

    Yes, of course: satellite surveillance, communications, and GPS do correspond to some of the roles of high ground in traditional warfare. They provide inarguable “bang for the buck” in military terms, just as their civilian counterparts do.

    What I was trying (ineptly) to say was that over the years, people with ambitions for military astronautics and for weapons platforms in orbit have repeatedly exploited other associations of high ground: the castle on a hilltop that commands the countryside, bombing and strafing by aircraft overhead, all the SF tropes of space navies and space dogfights, LEO populated with terawatt lasers and “rods from god” — as justifications. It’s those associations that I consider bogus.

    They could become meaningful when access to space becomes much cheaper — when there’s no longer such a profound asymmetry between (1) the cost of acquiring and relaying massless data and (2) the cost of orbiting large masses, large power supplies, life support and re-entry systems for people, propulsion for orbital maneuvers, armor and other defensive capabilities, etc. But touting them today as if that asymmetry didn’t exist is misleading, just as it was misleading in November 1957 to talk about Sputnik as if it were a super-Tupolev bomber zooming high over the DEW Line.

  • Anonymous: Think about what you are saying for a moment. While scientists may happily spend a billion dollars and growing for nothing better than to find out whether standing water might have existed on Mars at some undetermined date, “policy makers” never signed on to that. Policy makers signed on to the untruth that these kinds of missions might determine anything about any life on Mars (I don’t say “lie” because there was no intential lie involved, but anybody who understands anything about field work knows that these missions we are doing now will provide very close to no information relevant to this question, except in the most indirect ways possible), and the truth that they are part of a larger effot to open the space frontier.

    There is not shortage of papers and quotes, by scientists and politicians, in support of the “new frontier” of space. I am aware of few, if any, arguing directly that it is worth spending more than a billion dollars to find standing water on Mars, without application to the wider issues that I have brought up.

    Let me conclude simply by stating that there is an easy way to find out who is correct in this debate. Gut the human space program, as many scientists would like to do, put anyand see where automated space science is a decade or two down the road. I believe it would be a disaster for space science if that were to actually happen, but, for better or worse, because of the wider issues that I have brought up, there is no political chance of that actually happening (as Mr Obama has just demonstred!).

    — Donald

  • “Think about what you are saying for a moment. While scientists may happily spend a billion dollars and growing for nothing better than to find out whether standing water might have existed on Mars at some undetermined date, “policy makers” never signed on to that.”

    I never said that the Mars Program is only about dating past water on Mars. And I never said that decision makers signed up only for dating past water on Mars. Those are your words, not mine.

    (As an aside, even if that was my position, I’d note that your past arguments for a human presence on the Moon revolve around an equally narrow accurate scientific dating of the solar system.)

    From NASA’s FY 2008 budget justification, here in black and white is what decision makers have signed up for in the Mars Program:

    “Mars is the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, with land mass approximately equivalent to the Earth’s and what appear to be familiar features such as riverbeds, past river deltas, and volcanoes. Mars holds valuable scientific clues to the development of the solar system, planets, and maybe life itself. The Mars Program has been developed to conduct a rigorous, incremental, discovery-driven exploration of Mars to determine the planet’s physical, dynamic, and geological characteristics.”

    I’d note that it’s a little bit broader than dating water on Mars.

    “Policy makers signed on to the untruth that these kinds of missions might determine anything about any life on Mars”

    I don’t mean to be mean, but you really need to do some reading on the potential of Mars sample return missions before making a blanket statement like this.

    “and the truth that they are part of a larger effot to open the space frontier.”

    Preparation for human space exploration does make an appearance in the last of the three outcomes for the Mars Program in the budget justification. Here’s all three:

    “3C.2: Progress in understanding the processes that determine the history and future of habitability in the solar system, including the origin and evolution of Earth’s biosphere and the character and extent of prebiotic chemistry on Mars and other worlds.

    3C.3: Progress in identifying and investigating past or present habitable environments on Mars and other worlds, and determining if there is or ever has been life elsewhere in the solar system.

    3C.4: Progress in exploring the space environment to discover potential hazards to humans and to search for resources that would enable human presence.”

    But it’s only one of three outcomes, and human hazards and resources are certainly not the only reason or the driving reason that the Mars Program is funded.

    FWIW…

  • Anonymous: I’d note that [this justification is] a little bit broader than dating water on Mars.

    Of course, but my point is, that wasn’t what we got for our billion dollars. What we got was the result I stated. If scientists were fully honest about what a billion-plus dollar mission could realistically achieve, and the Mars program were not seen as part of a wider, only partially scientific objective, they would get a little (or a lot) less money.

    The thing you’re ignoring is the reason that people justify doing something, and the reason that they are really doing it, are often very different, and that’s as true of nations as it is of individuals. Sure, people want to discover life elsewhere in the Solar System, but any understanding beyond the bare discovery (and probably not even that) is not going to happen they way we are going about it today. Scientists are using all sorts of arguments in an attempt to justify what they want the nation to pay for, just as us advocates for human spaceflight do. But the cost of the real results we are getting is far beyond their worth compared to what other sciences could get for similar funds, especially outside of the space community, and if the nation did not see these projects as leading toward something grander, we wouldn’t be finding it to the tune that we are.

    — Donald

  • Vladislaw

    And what EXACTLY does all this have to do with Paris Hilton or Britney Spears? Man you guys got to get a life and learn to focus on what is important.

    Just kiddin’ ….

    Monte, I understand what you mean’t now and I agree, when it comes to spending a buck, doesn’t matter what party you are in or organization, from the military to education, adminstrators and statesmen will try and exploit ANY rational to justify spending the money.

    I said the same thing about the picture of the chinese “space bomber” how it was a red herring to get funding. Sometimes I think the military boys talk to the other countries military to drum up spending by saber rattling.

    I think a military system like the blackhorse, inflight refueled vehicle, is technologically doable, I dont know about funding or the weapons in space issue. I still believe that the sudden interest in suborbital space tourism is somehow tied to what the military wants in suborbital. After being denied airspace by Turkey during Iraq it has REALLY bothered the military.

  • However, I am guessing you really meant to say that this not a GOOD market.

    Yes, that was essentially what I meant to say.

  • […] Nature wades into the debate about funding for various astronomy missions within NASA triggered by NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s AAS speech last week. In that speech, Griffin warned that Congress’ decision to provide extra funding for the […]

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