I know a guy at JPL who complains that Bush has put forth a "no science" mission for NASA. Now, this guy suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, so I take anything he says about politics with a grain of salt. And certainly you would expect someone whose particular piece of pork was taken away to complain, so that redoubles my skepticism. But he still is in a position to know what the budget realignment means.

What are your thoughts on:

1) Has Bush really cut NASA's science mission?
2) Was any science work that may have been cut both useful and the sort of thing that the private/university sector wouldn't do?
3) If it is useful and something only the government would do, does it pass the "would you rob your grandmother" test for what things the government ought to be funding?

Steve (Dafydd's brother)

Me too! I wanna go too!

Steve:

*Blink* You actually read Big Lizards? Huh!

1) Has Bush really cut NASA's science mission?

Yes, of course. Bush's back-to-the-Moon initiative obviously takes a bunch of NASA money to carry out. In the absence of the Moon mission, some of that money (but not all, see below) would instead go to pure-science launches. So naturally, there are a number of such missions -- mostly projected in the future, but some that were actually already planned and budgeted -- that have to be postponed or canceled.

2) Was any science work that may have been cut both useful and the sort of thing that the private/university sector wouldn't do?

Um, somewhere around "all of it." All the work NASA does is both useful and the sort of thing that commercial/academic groups either will not or cannot pay for.

3) If it is useful and something only the government would do, does it pass the "would you rob your grandmother" test for what things the government ought to be funding?

"There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs."

In this case, we're trading off a very useful science probe for a manned Moon mission. It's simply a matter of priorities: with a robust space program, all the missions we could have done earlier we can do later, for a fraction of the cost (because we can launch from space or from Luna, and because we'll have better technology).

Too, the science bugs at NASA and JPL tend to be very myopic: they each believe that the entire purpose of the space program is to fund their mission, which is the most vital thing the human race has ever done.

But the old saw from the Right Stuff -- "no bucks, no Buck Rogers" -- can actually be reversed: no Buck Rogers, no bucks. What drives people's imaginations and interest, what sustains the whole space program, and what therefore engages Congress... is the romance of Man in space.

Not intelligent toasters in space: men and women living and working in space or on the Moon or (even better) on other planets. For good or ill, the Moon is not classed as a planet, either in astronomy or in the public imagination. The first people to walk on Mars will be called the first peopel to walk on an alien planet, and this will generate a staggering interest in the space program all around the world -- as happened in 1969.

Not only that, but the benefits of a manned space program are so tremendous that to reject them in favor of sending intelligent toasters instead is to be criminally blind to the needs of mankind.

The real solution is to get people so interested in space that they pressure Congress to increase funding (at the expense of three or four earmarks, or perhaps by actually rationally reforming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). That way, we can fund manned space missions and still pay for some more space toasters.

Note that the very same people who denounce the CEV today were denouncing the Shuttle program back in the seventies; and the Shuttle is now the primary launch vehicle we have for launching those scientific probes.

They -- Carl Sagan is their patron saint -- always say that if we just eliminated the manned space program, think of how many science missions we could fund with that same money!

But this is static analysis at its worst, and their political ignorance and naiveté is irritating: if we eliminated the manned space program, Congress would immediately gobble up that money to use for the pressing need of hometown pork... and very shortly, NASA itself would be stripped bare, because there would no longer be any public interest in it.

It's static analysis in another direction as well: first, people like your friend assume that cutting out manned space would leave all that money for unmanned space, instead of for more ethanol and milk subsidies; and second, they assume that the money pile can never grow -- either through Congress adding more money if interest increases, or else by advancing technology such that launches cost less than they used to do.

So yes, I believe it is indeed worth funding the return to the Moon.

Dafydd

"Luna City, here we come!"

Right back where you started from?

(Couldn't resist...)

I'm seconding CERDIP.

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