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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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From Nature magazine
It has come to this: planetary scientists across the United States hawked baked goods to the public on Saturday in an effort to drum up awareness of their field’s dwindling financial support. They were protesting plans in US President Barack Obama's 2013 budget request to cut 21% from NASA's planetary-science budget, and 38% from its Mars projects.
“The planetary programme is one of the shining examples of NASA at its best,” says Alan Stern, vice-president of research and development in the space science and engineering division at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who coordinated the nationwide Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale. “We’re not asking for a raise, but we sure would prefer not to have such a steep cut.”
One site where scientists are becoming agitated is NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where many Mars missions are built and managed. As the lab held its annual open house on Saturday, planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and the University of California, Los Angeles enticed visiting space fans to stop outside the entrance for cupcakes and learn about the budget plight.
At times, crowds were small, but the event hosted a steady flow of traffic, said organizer Jennifer Buz, a Caltech seismologist. In addition to sampling cupcakes in flavours such as 'red planet' and 'white dwarf', visitors tapped their toes to live music and entered a raffle to win bits of meteorite. Children trundled around in a pedal car made up to look like a Mars rover.
The planetary scientists weren't hoping to fill their coffers with the revenue from the sale; instead, they offered free sweets in return for signatures on letters beseeching Congress to reverse the cuts. The Pasadena group estimated that it collected hundreds of names.
Planetary protest
Elsewhere, planetary scientists showed that they would do anything to raise awareness. In Boulder, they polished shoes. In Houston, Texas, scientists from the Lunar and Planetary Institute joined forces with the dark side, colluding with costumed Star Wars stormtroopers to attract supporters.
As in the lab, “young people do the grunt work for these things”, notes Matt Siegler, a postdoc studying lunar ice at the JPL. Students and recent PhDs hear 'budget cuts', and foresee their careers fizzling like a failed rocket launch. "Am I going to have to leave the field because of this?" Siegler wonders.
According to Obama’s budget, which is currently under discussion in Congress, planetary research would suffer the greatest blow to any science programme in 2013. But not all parts of the space agency are hurting. The James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2018 but suffering from delays and budget overruns, is gobbling up funds with a 21% increase. And the White House requested that the budget to support commercial space flight be more than doubled.
“I do feel like planetary science is getting picked on,” says Buz. “It’s just looking grimmer and grimmer.”
Researchers fear a future on the unemployment line, with the United States forsaking its lead in the space race and children, with no cool space discoveries to inspire them, losing enthusiasm for science.
And should the nation later decide to get back into planetary studies, it may find that researchers have left the field or moved to countries with ongoing support for their work. “It’ll be too late,” said Kim Lichtenberg, who works on mission operations for the Mars Curiosity rover at the JPL. “There isn’t going to be anything to inspire the next generation. We won’t have people who are trained any more.”
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on June 11, 2012.
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18 Comments
Add CommentNo wonder we suck at math.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey gang this is from SA. The current president does not equate science with jobs, at least not the type of jobs he wants, minimal wage type jobs. Science breeds good jobs that pay a good wage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen we were at our peak we were graduating more engineers then anybody else. Engineers invent things, these things have to be produced, people get jobs to make the things engineers invent.
If we keep up the only things our children will be able to do is clean windows and take out the trash because we'll have no technical jobs in this country.
Let's see...the Shuttle when announced was going to average 21 million a flight. It ended up averaging almost 1.7 BILLIION a flight. Yup , over 75 times as much per flight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a big space exploration fan but Nasa is a joke when it comes to budget estimates...a joke.
Yes, 'free cupcakes' because if they tried to sell them they'd end up spending more on setting up a bureacracy for buying candy sprinkles than they took in on cupcake sales.
"“There isn’t going to be anything to inspire the next generation..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this????????
This is 'Scientific American'. In the 60's when I was a kid this site (if the Internet existed) would have had ten thousand comments on any space subject. The hundreds of billions wasted by Nasa on the Shuttle and ISS did 'ZILCH' to inspire kids about space. You blew it long ago.
Scientists like this love government money. I wonder which political party they prefer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou’re blaming the scientist for the bureaucracy that NASA became, that blame should be clearly aimed at the politicians and I don’t care which party you name. Ask yourself who benefited the most from NASA waste, well for that matter any waste in government? It always comes back to the elected officials.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA has made some great strides in improving the effectiveness of many of their programs. The Discovery and Explorers programs are prime examples of tax payers getting a lot of bang for the buck.
Let me ask you this, if you’re not happy with NASA how many letters did you write to your senator, congressmen or the president telling them that NASA needs to be run better?
I’m old, so it doesn’t really make a lot of difference to me, but you all go ahead and eliminate science from the American agenda for funding. Concentrate that money where it will do more good, you know social projects. Let the other countries do the science, which by the way Europe is already blowing our doors off. If you look at the projects most Americans think of as American, ESA was a major sponsor and science contributor including Hubble.
Europe has the LHC we have a hole in the ground in Texas and a shut down Tevatron.
But hey you’re all right we need to graduate more community organizers. Kill NASA, who needs space or science when we have so many problems here on Earth.
So, how do we write congress to protest the budget cuts?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey should have provided a link for that.
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we could just convince Washington to fund DoD with bake sales...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn what planet do you live on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresident Obama's budget was dead on arrival in the Republican controlled House.
It is the HOUSE not the president who decides the budget, all the President's budget amounts to is his wish list, suggestions, but in the extreme Right Wing Republican controlled House the answer will be NO to anything he asks for.
BUT THE CUTS WILL HAPPEN, and THEY WILL BE BIGGER. as the Republicans will cut everything except the military budget, and to ensure the military budget remains untouched, they will savage NASA, because the science hating Republicans in the house feel any research that indirectly supports the theory of man induced climate change is wasted money.
I repeat, the HOUSE WILL WRITE THE BUDGET.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresident Obama's budget is DOA. It amounts to nothing more than a wish list that the cut to the bone Republicans will happily say no to.
The ONLY cuts they will resist are to the military.
To ensure the military gets fully funded the Republicans will savage NASA worse than President Obama ever dreamed of doing.
Oh and you probably didn't know this, or you wouldn't spout such gibberish, but the constitution delegates TO THE HOUSE SOLE power to determine the ACTUAL, REAL budget, and I repeat the House is under Republican control.
Traditionally presidents present a budget, but it has absolutely NO LEGAL bearing.
His only power re the budget is the veto, which is severely limited when it comes to the budget, due to all the "poison pills" Republicans can put in it that will only come to pass should he veto the bill.
We need the money we would have sent to NASA for the purpose of getting in the face of China. Why we are doing that I cannot say.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI cannot believe SciAm is publishing such a ridiculous article, a red herring if there ever was one in regards to the budget and the fantasy budget cuts to NASA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is the Republican controlled house that will decide now much NASA will be cut, and considering the wholesale anti-science ideology driving the Republican party today, their cuts are going to make the ones Pres. Obama suggests look reasonable (and that's the whole point of his making them).
The budget presidents traditionally submit carry NO WEIGHT of LAW as the constitution delegates sole authority to write the budget to the HOUSE.
Today the House is under firm Republican control, that means THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET IS DOA IN HOUSE.
Of course I wouldn't jump for joy, because what WILL COME OUT OF THE REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED HOUSE will be MUCH BIGGER cuts to NASA in order to sustain full funding for the US Military.
They have stated extremely clearly that EVERYTHING is cuttable to ensure the military is fully funded.
What's truly pathetic is these very educated scientists are ignorant re how our system works. Otherwise they'd know if they want to affect the budget, they'd be talking to their congressmen, NOT President Obama.
You were doing fine up until the end. Let me correct just a couple of things. Both parties are bought and paid for by the Military Industrial Complex. The Republicans do not like science because it makes a vocal faction of theirs look very ignorant. Their Corporate Aristocracy can always find engineers over in India who will work for peanuts. There problem is trying to figure out how to bust the unions so they can lower the wages in the US and concentrate more wealth into the top 1%. NASA, to them makes no money for the owners of the Republican Party so it is a waste of tax dollars just like welfare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly I stated: blame should be clearly aimed at the politicians and I don’t care which party you name. The fact is neither party is smart enough to equate science with jobs. They are both very short sighted with only the vision to see the next election; they are not about what is best for America they are about what they need to do to get elected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need to fight for what we want but we've raised a bunch of wimps (my generation's fault, we gave you everything and didn't make you work or sacrifice for one damn thing) who would rather sit home, eat big Macs while playing computer games then write a letter or actually call a politician and state a opinion. I would never even suggest that one of you go out and for God's sake actually protest, demonstrate or do anything that might actually simulate a commitment to an ideal.
Enjoy the world, your ineptitude created it. I would get some lens cleaner for your rose colored glasses; I think you’re going to need them.
So where is the petition already? There is a petition generator at http://signon.org/ and another at the whitehouse web site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, let's get real. Although it is true that the highest budgets that NASA has seen has been under the Democratic presidents in the 1960's to levels that were up to 4.1% of the federal budget and corrected to 2007 dollars of between $32 and $34 Billion. And, the budget declined through the Nixon(R) and Ford(R) presidencies from $21 billion(2.31%) to $14 billion(1.35%)corrected to 2007 dollars during Nixon's administration and to between $11.1 (0.98%) to $11.6(0.98%) billion corrected to 2007 dollars during Ford's administration. Carter(D)matched the lowest levels the agency has seen of between $11.6(0.98%) to $11.2(0.82%) billion in 2007 dollars. Reagan(R) started increasing the budget from $11.2 to $17.7 billion in 2007 dollars varying between 0.75% to 0.96% of the federal budget. George Bush(R) continued with budgets between $16.7 to $19.6 billion in 2007 dollars varying from 0.96% to 1.05% of the federal budget. Clinton cut funding back down from $18.5 billion in 2007 dollars (1.01%) to $14.9 billion in 2007 dollars (0.76%). George W Bush held the budget relatively constant from $15 to $16 billion in 2007 dollars ranging from 0.76% to 0.58% of the budget. George W Bush's final budget that was approved was for $17.138 billion in 2007 dollars and 0.60% of the federal budget. Since Obama has been in office the budget numbers recorded are between $17.186 billion (0.57%)in 2007 dollars and $17.005 billion in 2007 dollars (0.53%) these three years had unpassed or passed and unauthorized budgets. The estimated 2012 budget in 2007 dollars is $16 billion in 2007 dollars which is 0.48% of the federal budget. Unpassed or passed but unauthorized means that the agency has to continue doing what they were told to do during the last passed budget; the whole federal budget was that way - so who has wasted money? Over 1000 days without a budget in the last administration - that is both Democrats and Republicans not just Republicans. jonathanseer history does not back up your claim!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not cut this irrelevant federal swamp; NASA?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey have no mission. No leader. No where to go. And, they depend upon the Russians for BASIC transportation.
Oh, yeah, and Richard Branson and Elon Musk waiting in the PROFIT corner.
Nice work NASA. Time for you to go.