NASA Administrator Mike Griffin addressed an all-hands meeting yesterday at Goddard Space Flight Center which I attended. His primary focus was on addressing concerns in the science community about NASA, including funding and the advisory process.
Just a few highlights:
On the Hubble Space Telescope
There has been a strong, visible, clear intent by NASA management to restore the previously cancelled Hubble servicing mission, if it is technically possible to do so. A final decision and an accompanying announcement should be made by November.
On the NASA science program funding situation
The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) FY07 budget request is $5.33 B, up from FY06 by 1.5%. And we have an Administration (not just NASA), that is committed to preservation of SMD funding in FY08-10, albeit at a lower growth rate, 1%, than we all would like. In FY11 and beyond, SMD funding tracks Agency top line growth.
On NASA and White House support for science
Science today comprises a larger piece of the NASA portfolio than ever before; 32% today as compared with 24% back in the mid-90s.
and
There's more, indeed much more, but my point is, I think, clear. These are not the actions of a science-hostile NASA, OMB, or President. Quite the contrary.
And on the broader view of the purpose of space exploration
But, as always, there is another view, best and most tersely captured by the President's Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, in his March '06 speech at the AAS Goddard Symposium. Jack noted that the Vision for Space Exploration is fundamentally about bringing the resources of the solar system within the economic sphere of mankind. It is not fundamentally about scientific discovery. To me, Marburger's statement is precisely right.
So a key point must be made: Exploration without science is not "tourism". It is far more than that. It is about the expansion of human activity out beyond the Earth. Exactly this point was very recently noted and endorsed by no less than Stephen Hawking, a pure scientist if ever there was one. Hawking joins those, including the Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, who have long pointed out this basic truth: The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species. So to me exploration is, in and of itself, equally as noble a human endeavor as is scientific discovery.
1 comment:
"These are not the actions of a science-hostile NASA, OMB, or President."
I really question the details of those NASA budget numbers. My colleagues and I are facing 15% to 50% cuts in funding this year.
From a National Academies of Science and Engineering report "An Assessment of Balance in NASA's Science Programs":
The total funding available for SMD programs in 2007-2011 is to be reduced by $3.1 billion below program projections that accompanied the FY 2006 budget (corresponding to a reduction of about 10 percent for the period FY 2006-2010). At the time that the Vision for Space Exploration (“the Vision”) was announced in 2004, the programs that are now in SMD were projected to grow robustly from about $5.5 billion in 2004 to about $7 billion in 2008 to accommodate the development of new scientific missions. As recently as the time of the FY 2006 budget request, the SMD budget for FY 2007 was projected at $5.96 billion. The actual request for SMD in FY 2007 is $5.33 billion, which is about $200 million less than was appropriated in 2004 even before taking inflation into account. Subsequent years have a projected growth of 1 percent, which is again less than the projected rate of inflation.
A letter in Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science 8 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5792, pp. 1387 - 1388) reports on "Declines in Funding of NIH R01 Research Grants".
This administration has tried to suppress scientific results that are inconvenient for the oil industry.
This administration is trying to inject a religious myth (creationism) into science classrooms.
You cannot possibly believe that this administration is anything but anti-science.
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