Sadly, not about physics, but about funding issues that might lead to temporary layoffs and other severe cutbacks.

from: Fermilab Today
to: usersorg@fnal.gov
date: Jan 5, 2007 10:16 AM
subject: Message to Users from the Fermilab Director

A message from the director: Continuing Resolution

In December, Congress passed the third “continuing resolution” or “CR” to fund the federal budget for fiscal year 2007 at the 2006 level. Also in December, the incoming chairs of the House and Senate appropriations committees stated their intent to pass a “joint budget resolution” for the remainder of the fiscal year. The committee chairs were careful not to specify the level of the joint funding resolution and explicitly stated their intent to mitigate as much as possible the adverse consequences that would result from such resolution. However, there has been broad speculation that the result may be a continuing resolution at the FY06 level for the remainder of the FY07 fiscal year. This would have very negative effects on many federally funded programs throughout the country, including the physical sciences and Fermilab.

Last month, DOE Under Secretary Orbach requested, and we provided, an analysis of the impact and a contingency plan should the level of Fermilab funding remain at the FY06 level. I want to share with you the unvarnished consequences of such a budget as we have presented it to DOE (see links below). Of course the specifics may change as things unfold. Among other measures, the contingency plan includes the possibility of a month-long furlough, or temporary layoff from work, of all Fermilab employees except those required for safety and for essential activities.

I want to assure you that, at this stage, this is only a contingency plan. Should such measures become necessary, I will consult with the laboratory management about how best to proceed. In the meantime, we are working very hard to make sure that the consequences of a reduced budget level are understood at all government levels and to make the strongest case to redress the situation and avert these consequences. Thanks to your extraordinary efforts, the remarkable results on the Tevatron, the neutrino program and ILC R&D make a powerful case for support.

We don’t plan on layoffs for FY07; they would not help much in achieving significant savings this year. We expect that the president’s budget request for FY08 will be supportive of the physical sciences and of Fermilab so that layoffs will not be necessary.

Last year, at the request of Congress, the National Academy carried out a study on American competitiveness that resulted in the report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The report pointed to the critical need for the country to increase its investment in the physical sciences in order to remain competitive among the nations of the world. The president’s budget and subsequent congressional committees have recognized this critical need with broad bipartisan support. A CR at the FY06 level maintained for the full year would amount to a cut in funding, due to inflation, at a time when increased support is called for. This would undermine progress in the physical sciences and the world-competitive position of the U.S. in science and technology. I am optimistic that this will not be allowed to happen.

You will surely have many questions. I may not have a lot of answers, but for employees who would like to meet informally with me, I will be available to provide whatever information I have on Monday, January 8, at noon in One West.

For more information, visit this website: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/SpecialCorner.html.

NASA is sad. (Via Orin Kerr.) They have a spiffy new mission to go to the Moon, which speaks directly to our innermost yearnings to leverage our capabilities and energize a coordinated effort. Really, the kind of stuff that makes us truly human.

If anyone should be excited by this, it’s the two groups NASA cares about the most: young adults, and members of Congress.

At an October workshop attended by 80 NASA message spinners, young adults were right up there with Congress as the top two priorities for NASA’s strategic communications efforts.

But the target audience is not going along!

Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA’s new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.

Concerned about this lack of interest, NASA’s image-makers are taking a hard look at how to win over the young generation — media-saturated teens and 20-somethings growing up on YouTube and Google and largely indifferent to manned space flight.

So apparently, we blame the internets. The leap from media-saturation to Moon-apathy seems a bit of a stretch to me, but I understand that one must blame somebody. I blame the fact that the Moon/Mars initiative is eviscerating honest science at NASA, and also that “we must get there before the Chinese do” doesn’t currently evoke the “we must get there before the Soviets do” xenophobia that was so effective in the Sixties.

But we shouldn’t fear, as there is a solution for the frustrating indifference shown by those lazy kids today: celebrity endorsements.

Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such as podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, like actors David Duchovny (“X-Files”) and Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.

Outside groups have offered ideas too, such as making it a priority to shape the right message about the next-generation Orion missions.

And NASA should take a hint from Hollywood, some suggested.

“The American public engages with issues through people, personalities, celebrities, whatever,” said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a space advocacy group. “When you don’t have that kind of personality, or face, or faces associated with your issue, it’s a little bit harder for the public to connect.”

I understand that the X-Files and ST:TNG are the hot media properties on the streets these days. Never let it be said that NASA’s instinctive feel for the cutting edge of coolness is anything other than maximally supa-fresh.

If I may humbly offer a suggestion. It’s possible that youthful apathy towards the promise of a Moon base is not due to a short-circuit of wonder caused by too-easy access to YouTube videos. It might be, instead, that this apathy is due to the complete absence of any compelling rationale for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this project. Perhaps we could return to a management philosophy in which we first hit upon a really good reason for doing something, and then we figure out how to do it and work on spreading the excitement, rather than the reverse order. Maybe — just maybe — those kids today are sophisticated enough not to get excited by boondoggles, but they might actually be enthusiastic about learning surprising new things about the universe.

I want to believe.