Phil at the Bad Astronomer breathes a sigh of relief that an amendment by Barney Frank to prevent NASA from spending money on a manned mission to Mars has been defeated in the House. I haven’t been following this issue closely, so I’m not precisely sure what the amendment says, but from the looks of it I completely disagree with Phil. If I understand it correctly, the bill would not have cut NASA funding at all, just have prevented it from being used for the specific purpose of studying the possibility of sending astronauts to Mars. There is a huge difference between those two things.
Right now NASA is seriously underfunded, and there are three huge drains on the budget: the shuttle program, the Space Station, and the Moon/Mars initiative, all of which are mismanaged money pits. What is being hurt in all this is real science, which is being cut to the bone — essentially all of the Beyond Einstein missions (to study black holes, dark energy, and inflation) have been delayed, some essentially indefinitely. Studying Mars is interesting and fascinating. Spending money now on the idea of sending human astronauts to Mars is a politically-motivated boondoggle. There used to be a sensible procedure by which priorities were set, in which high-powered National Academy panels would look over the possibilities and use sensible scientific criteria to decide what was both interesting and feasible. The Bush administration has made a shambles of that process, and it has to stop.
Astrophysics in space, the one thing that NASA does well, is being killed off. The Moon/Mars initiative, according to people who know a lot more about the political wrangling than I do, is directly to blame. Sorry to hear that the amendment didn’t pass.
Here’s my conspiracy theory. In reality, for my theory to be right it would require more forethought and competence on the part of politicians than I am willing to credit them with, but when I’m feeling paranoid, here’s what I think.
The whole “let’s send humans to Mars” thing is part of a long range plan by Bush and other politicos to kill science. See, it plays well in the press right now, which is always nice for politicians, but it also redirects a lot of space science funding to the manned space program. Meanwhile, the actual costs of putting humans on Mars at the moment are so huge that there’s no hope that Congress is going to keep kicking in that kind of money for very long. So, before long, the whole thing is one gigantic target, and will get cut for the boondoggle that it is once the public looses patience. But it will just be a cut… the money won’t go back to space science, it will just be gone. Voila, the Bush crowd and the like have furthered their mission of undermining science.
Although nobody was thinking this when the started, the SSC had the effect of seriously hurting particle physics in this country. Lots of resources were redirected to it, and many of them were lost along with the additionally funding the SSC was getting when the SSC was cancelled.
-Rob
The mood of friends at JPL is that this is engineering winning over science … the military is very interested in heavy lift LEO rockets and is seriously worried about manned military platforms. Carving a big chunk out of the NASA budget to push development is pure gravy for them.
Here in Europe, the future is looking bright for space-based science (as for all physical sciences for that matter). Just today, a member of the large European space-based dark energy mission, DUNE, told me to invite SNAP (the US based project, which has more sensitivity, BTW, and is part of the stalled Beyond Einstein mission) collaborators to join their project. It’s all pretty frustrating.
And, Rob, US particle physics program didn’t have a future without the SSC, as we have now so aptly proven.
I think there are too many DUNEs, though…
Sending humans to Mars is an engineering stunt that has little to do with science. Unfortunately, I don’t think that most of the public understands this. And based on all the excellent pictures of the surface of Mars that I have seen I’ve concluded that it’s not an endearing landscape, and that I much prefer the trees and bunnies in my own back yard.
I’m always a little surprised to hear scientists speak so strongly against (near-term) manned space missions. If money is actually committed to such an endeavour, and it turns out at least moderately successful, couldn’t it stimulate more spending and benefits to science by indirect means–kind of like “trickle down economics?” 😉
I for one wanted to become an astronaut when I was a kid and eventually became(becoming) a physicist. Maybe someday this will be perceived as benefiting mankind!
Like it or not, the Moon/Mars initiative is here. I like the idea of going to the Moon, though I think thinking about going to Mars is the best we can do for the next ten years or so. Trust me, I am watching plenty of projects take a hit– and I was on NuSTAR, which was axed entirely.
The problem here isn’t $700 million, it’s several billion. NASA is underfunded severely for the Moon/Mars work, and that’s the direction NASA is headed, as surely as it headed for the Shuttle in the 1970s.
I would rather see NASA given what it needs to do cutting-edge science as well as funding going back to the Moon. But that decision has already been made, at least for this year, I think. And if the amendment were passed, it’s not clear to me where the money would have gone. If the amendment had earmarked it for space science, that may have been different, even as much as I loathe earmarks.
Basically, this whole thing is a mess. One of my fears a year or so ago was that this would make scientists turn on each other. I still worry about that, honestly.
Sean, I agree with you that the $700 million can be used elsewhere in NASA. But the solution is not to take it from Moon/Mars (which, incidentally, is suffering for lack of funds too), it is to take money from things that are hemorrhaging it and put it someplace useful.
I wrote at Bush’s State of the Union speech:
“It’s a standard technique–drop funding for some project that could work but isn’t on their party’s agenda (cough hybrids cough). Claim that you have to use that money to research for something in the future like the hydrogen car. Watch as corporations use that R&D money to do nothing important. Quietly drop funding a few years later, claiming hydrogen cars weren’t feasible. Congratulations! You’ve killed funding for the thing the other party wanted, without people noticing. Sound familiar, NASA? Drop science funding for “Manned space exploration of the Moon”. Quietly kill that in a few years. Science funding never comes back.”
I would add that we are fighting among ourselves about who gets the scraps, which is the worst thing that we could be doing. Instead ask, why did we drop one program for another? Why can’t we fund both? If a single aircraft costs the price of the entire “Universe” directorate, including HST, JWST, and GLAST, or half of the new Crew vehicle work, why are we bitching about either side?
I grew up watching human spaceflights on TV too. What we need is Leadership: a president directing “We choose to go to the Moon,” Eugene Krantz insisting “Failure is not an option,” or Alan Shepard in the spacecraft saying, “Let’s quit screwing around and light this candle!”
When someone told this to Michael Griffin last December, NASA employees cheered.
I agree with Sean.
Funding for Fundamental Science is being threatened by “show, but no-go” projects. I spoke with Harold Zirin (Caltech solar physicist, emeritus) a few yrs ago, about lack-of-merit in Funding & he said:
“They [ Washington, & others ] something SEXY!!?”
I.e., it’s all about IMPRESSION (wowie-zowie, show-offy stuff), rather than Reality (“real Science”, Science is a long, arduous campaign interrupted by a few moments of sheer ecstacy of Discovery). It’s analogous to the Film Industry, where REAL artistry in film-making is being replaced by Sex, Violence, Stupid (e.g., “The Jerk”) stuff. Sex sells, Stupid sells.
Space Junk like Shuttle, Int’l Space Station (ISS), human-to-Mars farce..makes for good PR (Public Relations)..THAT’S IT. The Nobel Prize
[ all politics, decision by committee..a Physics Nobel back in the 40’s was shown to be invalid..”Opinion” by peer-review, Nobel committee
“Science begets Knowledge, Opinion..Ignorance
— Hipparchos ]
is another farce, it’s the public misconception of scientific-achievement. Labels, sexy projects, Awards..all Materialism nonsense.
I made some phone calls to physicists around the country in Spring ’05, to discuss a “issue”. Strangely enought, the above matter of Science Funding came up. On a Saturday, I spoke to a UIUC black-hole theorist (Oxford PhD, Caltech undergrad), & he was REALLY concerned about the future of (fundamental) Science funding..he was working weekends (in conjunction w/colleagues) to try to avoid a catastrophic funding mess in the coming years. And, I thought I was going thru Hell.. My conversation with a Caltech Physics post-Doc: “The low-temperature group @JPL is being disbanded, IT WILL NEVER COME BACK”. This is a perfect example of a long-term causalty, to a short-term brain-fart by the White House (choke, cough..Imposters, Posers, Losers!). A Physics research associate (Digital Life, JPL project about in-situ detection of extra-terrestial life) lost his JPL funding, & is now scrambling to find funding..*outside* Caltech. I feel bad for him, because he’s really smart (nuclear physics is his background, he’s published w/Hans Bethe, collaborates w/M. Gell-Mann).
I’m reminded of my situation @JPL 20 odd yrs ago, all the neat stuff got cut
[ the famous Computer Graphics group, which I was with for a time, got disbanded..Dr. James Blinn who did all the Voyager animations was reduced to flee to Caltech, & he eventually ditched Pasadena altogether for Microsoft. A real loss, he was a legendary researcher & excellent teacher ]
& we had to either work on military-crap or get laid off. I just gave up, & walked out..I didn’t work this hard to waste away my abilities on junk (“what a bunch of jack-offs!”).
The general outlook is bleak/pessimistic, this has been a well-known condition of the Human Race:
“In Greece, Wise Men speak [ scientists ]..FOOLS [ politicians ] decide”
– Anacharsis
I’m on a mission (Dawn) that was cancelled twice by NASA, so then sandwiched the last few years between a space agency (ASI) that often pays their bills 2-3 years after contracts are signed and another space agency (NASA) that doesn’t seem to have trouble cancellig a mission after spending couple hundred million on an international project. Now a launch date is actually set, but I’m watching NASA funding disappear for astrobiology and many other programs that the department themselves promoted as recently as a couple of years ago as being crucial. Excuse me, but I’m a little skeptical that NASA’s left hand knows what its right hand is doing.
It is indeed too bad that the amendment failed.
Though, I have to say that it’s extremely wishful thinking to believe that Beyond Einstein’s Constellation-X mission will be able to “image the event horizon of a black hole” in the X-ray. Too bad the astrophysics community can’t find a more promising project to invest its resources/time in.
A nice line of reasoning that. An X-ray detector won’t be able to image the event horizon of a BH, therefore it is pointless to send an X-ray detector up, therefore the astrophysics community is incapable of finding worthwhile or promising projects.
Or, you can actually read what the Constellation-X project is:
http://beyondeinstein.gsfc.nasa.gov/program/constellation-x.html
High resolution spectroscopy of faint sources is pretty well indispensable for cosmological progress, whether or not the project gets close to ‘seeing an event horizon’.
As for NASA there are two equally bad reasons why they would agree to huge chunks of funding going to ‘Moon-Mars’. One, they really don’t care if the money goes into entertainment rather than science. Two, they were (presumably still are) under abnormal political pressure.
Amara, you just gotta let me have a copy of the “kid fishing in the universe” from DUNE
http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~gruen/DUNE/ESTEC/Graps_CosmicDUNE2-06.pdf
JoAnne, Europeans always know where the next opportunity lies. Who settled America, who are modern americans descended from. lol!
Fortunately Jesuits were a little more ‘sensitive’ to the natives in South America, than some the cowboys who ‘settled’ north america. Live & Learn. – Q.
I was referring to the following paragraph Thomas (the one right before the “faint object” paragraph, which I agree is more worthwhile, but there are other astrophysics projects much more worthwhile that could be done with the money…):
http://universe.nasa.gov/program/constellation-x.html
‘The great sensitivity of Constellation-X will allow us to make “slow-motion movies” of hot gas falling toward a black hole. This is done not through imagery but through a technique called spectroscopy, which is analogous to fingerprinting the gas to determine unique properties, such as temperature, density, velocity and atomic number. We will be able to see time, from our perspective, come to a standstill as it approaches the black hole event horizon. Einstein’s general relativity makes specific predictions about the behavior of matter near a black hole; and any deviation from theory that may be revealed from Constellation-X observations will expose flaws in Einstein’s math.’
Quasar9: It’s a sweet image, isn’t it? It’s a scan of a small poster I’ve carried around with me through several countries and 4 or 5 jobs since the early 1990s. My former advisor, Eberhard Grün, asked to scan it and put it in the Outreach portion of one of his previous proposal submittals (4-6 years ago) of his DUNE (‘DUst measuremnts Near Earth’) dust telescope project. Parts of DUNE are being developed for NASA missions now, but he/we-in-the-dust-community are preparing a larger scale version of the mission for the ESA Cosmic Vision announcement of opportunity this Fall, and I’m the public outreach person again, as well as one of the dust charging experts. Eberhard likes that image to represent bringing stardust to the public, so I always use it.
That particular poster (tattered on my wall in my Roma office too) is by an artist named Leonard Parkin and is titled “Daydreams”. The printing on the poster says: “1988 Daydreams Unlimited, 433 E. Broadway, Salt Lake City, UT, 84111 (801) 531-0149”. The poster doesn’t have a copyright symbol, but perhaps it should. I tried a Google search to find the artist or the printing company and wasn’t successful. You are welcome to grab the ppt out of which that pdf presentation was made, but please keep with the image the information that I give in this paragraph for the painter’s name in order to give credit. (I neglected to give credit to the image in my presentation, as I should have.)
Thar be “dilithium crystals” in them orange hills on mars, so batten the hatches, hoist the solar-sail, and bring me my rum-n-bootie… cause I’m in for the long haul and am happy to be there… arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I stood on cocoa beach and held my mothers hand as my dad worried over guages dials and tubes at the cape when they monkeys went up…
I did the same thing when Shepard went up and Glenn too.
I was there when Apollo 13 launched… and I was there when the first shuttle mission went up… I’ve personally witnessed every major shot that ever went up…
And finally, I stood there holding my own kids hands with real tears in my eyes the day that they wished John Glenn GodspeedTwo, so I KNOW that there is something greater than all of us about this… and I know that it is important to the survival of man.
So I say godspeed to them all…
… and to hell with the rest.
Hi Amara, thanks tah, gracias, merci, shokran, …
I do, I do remember seeing it in the past too, couldn’t remember if it had been a poster for a film or a book, or one of those ‘posters’ you could buy in music stores for a buck or two. I’ll certainly mention the artist and title too.
The problem with the Moon/Mars “vision thing” is that there is no solid political or scientific consensus behind it. The scientifiic community is divided on the worth of the project (especially when we have to face up to the opportunity cost of funding a Moon/Mars program), and there is no solid political consensus behind it. Since this is a long term plan the absence of consensus is very dangerous — without it, it is easy to imagine that a future administration would strip the funding for it simply because it had a different set of priorities.
Conversely, if you look at the big science stories from Nasa in recent years (ie the ones that might win people Nobel prizes), they are almost exclusively about deep space — a good measurement of the Hubble constant, two wildly successful CMB missions (WMAP and COBE) and the HST’s vast contribution to the discovery of dark energy. The return on these programs in phenomenal — both in terms of science, and also in terms of PR — far in excess of the space station or shuttle program in recent years, which (sadly) only makes the news when it kills people.
In my opinion, a truly bold “vision” for space would ground the shuttle today — this is by far the biggest money pit inside of Nasa, and scrapping it would yield funds for both the further development of human spaceflight, and the Beyond Einstein missions.
We need a mix of manned/unmanned missions. If not for the shuttle, astronauts would not have been able to fix Hubble 3 times. If the shuttle were junked today, HST would fall into the sea. Doesn’t anyone remember “Failure is not an option?”
Going to Moon/Mars is certainly doable if we maintain the will. We have a chance of discovering life beyond the Earth, which would be one of the biggest scientific returns ever. On the other hand, some pure science missions would search for purely speculative energies. Perhaps that is why funding is a problem.
We have a chance of discovering life beyond the Earth…
lol, sure we do, if radio telescopes count as manned missions… 😉
thought the saying went “No Man or Woman is an Island”
… or “we” are all just “islands in the stream”, regardless of whether she gets to mars or dies advancing our collective knowledge, and, therefore, our long-term survival capabilities.
Could someone explain the advantages of having humans on the surface of Mars versus decade-more-advanced rovers? Rovers with more mobility, longer lifetimes, more sophisticated/redundant systems, AI-like processing capabilities? Do such advantages, if any, offset the couple-orders-of-magnitude (my est.) cost differences? Do such advantages, if any, offset the loss of data from cancelled or cut-back beyond-einstein-like programs? I’m a sci-fi fan and sure, the image of humans dancing around on the martian surface, climbing Mt. Olympus, peering into huge canyons sounds exciting. But ultimately too expensive entertainment IMO.
Bob.
Island, you know according to string theory, you possibly are a veritable walking talking breathing Island, maybe even a paradise Island (or pocket universe) for cells and strings of DNA.
You cannot be a planet, to be a planet it appears you need to be as ’round’ as Earth or Pluto, and the other 10, 11, … or is it 20, thus far categorized as planets.