With a few notable exceptions, journalists missed an opportunity to rip into a rare intersection of education and science on the campaign trail last week. It should be noted, penitently, that this column also appears a bit late, and usually I let missed stories slide after a week or so. But this is one of those instances when the press really fumbled a chance to get more out of the candidates.
The event in question was a speech that Barack Obama made in New Hampshire last Tuesday laying out his $18 billion education plan. Actually, the speech drew fairly widespread coverage - No Child Left Behind, and all. Only The Washington Post’s Marc Kaufman, however, expanded upon a little-noticed item at the end of Obama’s plan. In a note on fiscal responsibility, the senator says he would delay NASA’s controversial moon-to-Mars program five years in order to fund education initiatives. Kaufman took this inconspicuous item and, quite astutely, wove it into a larger article about candidates’ positions (mostly a lack thereof) on a crucial element in the future of American space exploration.
The reason that journalists could have done more with this story is that it amounts to a double whammy. It explores two underreported subjects at once: the moon-to-Mars program, and candidates’ platforms on science beyond climate and energy. The moon-to-Mars project, otherwise known as the Constellation program, is the Bush administration’s plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 with, specifically, an eye toward eventually sending them even farther. At an estimated cost of around $100 billion, many critics think that NASA has its head up a black hole on this one. They argue that Bush’s “vision” for space is exploration for exploration’s sake with little focus on the kind of scientific inquiries that could benefit human beings in the here and now.
It’s not that the moon-to-Mars program is as important as energy or education, which get much more play from politicians and the press, but reporters should be out there testing candidates. Journalists have a responsibility to push them beyond their tried and true talking points and search out the limits of their knowledge. Kaufman wrote in the Post that, “Except for Clinton’s, none of the official campaign Web sites appears to mention NASA or human space exploration specifically.” That’s still the case, and it shouldn’t be. Clinton made a smart move when she used the fiftieth anniversary of the Sputnik satellite launch this fall to announce that she would end the Republican “war on science.” Among other things, the New York senator said that she supports continuing manned space exploration and, seemingly, the Constellation program.
As the leader of the on-board computer development team for an R&D satellite, I have no doubt that 100 $100million robots can do far more science than 1 10billion manned mission. Except that's not the way it works.
There are many worthwhile science projects only robots can do. But there are many equally worthwhile science projects that require a human presence.
Computationally, the neural network between an astronaut's ears is unparalleled. Moreover, it contains truly vast amounts of education, wisdom not just knowledge. We're a long way from growing and training Artificial Intelligences that have anywhere near those capabilities.
As distances grow, and remote control becomes infeasible due to time-lag and the speed of light - and that means anywhere beyond lunar orbit, to do some things, we need people.
Moreover, just a few people locally can boost the effectiveness of robots dramatically. The more robots, the more it makes sense to have a human presence from a cost-benefit angle. One human can double or triple robot effectiveness, by dealing with the exceptional circumstances they can't cope with.
The only question is the balance, assuming science is the only reason to have a space program. But there's another concern. Earth is essentially a closed-system, and recycling can only do so much. We need to find other places to work with. Or one day some overgrown dirty icecube or chunk of space debris only the size of Rhode Island is going to press the cosmic CTRL-ALT-DEL keys and remove the only self-aware lifeform in this part of the Galaxy from the scene.
We need to get out more.
Posted by Zoe Brain
on Fri 30 Nov 2007 at 08:30 AM
It's worth noting that the $100 billion is supposed to come from NASA's existing budget levels plus inflation increases. I.e., the bulk of it will be "freed up" as the ISS is completed (or declared complete) and Shuttle operations end.
That in itself doesn't make it a good idea. That doesn't mean year-to-year overruns won't gnaw at space science. But in fairness, Constellation should be framed as "doing something different with what we spend on manned spaceflight" rather than as a 'new' or 'additional' $100B outlay on manned spaceflight.
Posted by Monte Davis
on Fri 30 Nov 2007 at 10:20 AM
Obama is a weak leader who spends all his time telling us about all that's wrong, but he spends very little time telling us anything tangible about what he WILL do. He's babbling about mindless-nothingness in order to appear semi-informed about important issues. This reminds me of the Star Trek episode in which the "leader" was drugged, and was a puppet responding with the words of manipulators behind the scenes. Worse yet...the number of people that have accepted this double-talking-babble as something tangible is alarming. It's no wonder that NASA is scared - they should be. Obama will take their funding and spread that wealth around to people who have no clue what NASA and the US Space Exploration mission is, let alone that it even exists. As R.E.M. said: "It's the end of the world as we know it...". But I don't feel fine at all.
Posted by j on Sat 18 Oct 2008 at 10:32 AM
NASA makes up less than 1% of the national budget.
Posted by john thompson on Mon 20 Oct 2008 at 11:53 AM
John Thompson, You are correct that NASA's budget is
Posted by mb on Wed 5 Nov 2008 at 08:56 AM
NASA isn't as expensive as everyone assumes--they're barely getting by on a shoestring budget using whatever chump change is left over from other government agencies. Check out the cost of this war, check out the cost of other state departments. I'm an engineer, and although I don't work for NASA I work with satellites. Almost everyone I knew in school was inspired by the space program. If Obama hurts NASA then many (not all, but a significant portion) will loose interest in science and math. Many kids today don't even believe we went to the moon because our gov has been so feckless RE: space travel.
Posted by Robert on Mon 10 Nov 2008 at 03:45 AM
I loved the article very comprehensive. I disagree with the commenter above; this (space travel or lack thereof) is not the reason kids don't believe we went to the Moon. Sociology is fickle. Kids today if you understand them are not the same as kids from the sixties. This is an entire article by itself so lets avoid it. To make a long story short, truly NASA is not the agency that everyone thought it was. I just read a post from another person (who has direct knowledge) who says, "people would be dismayed at the waste from this agency" There is currently a movement to keep the current administrator and this is how we responded.
I want to congratulate the Administrator on his accomplishments and would be willing to keep the Administrator on board provided they meet certain criteria.
First, a new era has dawned which requires a platform of transparency that can only be archived by fostering a culture of honesty and integrity. The general public has a personal stake in all its federal agencies and none seems to be more important and at times more intellectually invigorating than NASA. This agency either, never was a public agency, or somewhere along the way was hijacked by the military industrial complex through a sophisticated network of lobbyists. It can return to its former glory in reaching new heights in academic and scholarly research by utilizing all of its citizen's talents. Having said that, the administration must come clean on the contents and details which motivated them to have an agency-wide secret meeting on April 10, 2007; in which Counsel for NASA instructed the various agencies not to record the meeting. In order to protect themselves and out of curiosity, many agencies did just that, record those events. General Counsel for NASA then in a panic went flying all over the country collecting all remnants of the recording(s) including DVD's and CD's. Counsel then in congressional hearings admitted to personally destroying this evidence and sought to convince The House Science Committee (who was all too willing to go along with the scheme) that nothing about the meeting existed. The administrator must come clean, throw his hands up in the air, admit and proclaim, "Mr. DeRusse you won, it was about a massive blackout and censorship effort". Further the administrator must revive CFR-1275, "Investigation of Research Misconduct" which was a meticulously thrown together law in the Federal Register, and invoke its use against those they quietly enabled to commit scientific misconduct and fraud, including censorship. CFR-1275 was filed in October of 2003 prior to the second Bush election to deflect DoJ investigation into their activities against us (and others) in the event Bush was not re-elected. With Bush "re-elected" NASA and the politicized DoJ, breathed a sigh of relief and continued another 4 years of misrepresentations against BCC Meteorites and other minorities and targets. If NASA is to regain all of its former glory and prestige it must address and repair these concerns. In essence the Administrator must throw his hands up in the air and proclaim, "You caught us and you won Mr. DeRusse. We continued the years long efforts implemented by Sean O'Keefe and I apologize we give up".
http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
S. Ray DeRusse
www.bccmeteorites.com
Posted by S. Ray DeRusse on Sat 3 Jan 2009 at 11:50 AM
Would it not be cool if the US used one fifth of its military budget on NASA? And that NASA in addition worked even closer with other space agencies around the world? Of course, the military part should count for everyone, but we would be on the moon in no time if we all could unite. Though, humanity seems to have a problem with breathing in union...
Posted by Reptile on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 01:41 PM
How will it be if each and every country may focus on helping NASA to get along with its projects? In this life we are living, there wont be any other greatest experiences humans can boost emselves about other than finding emselves at the moon, eventuall on Mars, wel, it aint something to be made in a blink of an eye, but why should one feel jealous to finance the project for the coming generations. It is through lack of focus and limited scope of inteligence that one rates constellation programs as not important like education and all those other repeatitive staffs on earth, wel, its through education that we have astronants, presidents, teachers, etc, but one shouldnt loose any focus on other outcomes/products of educated societies.
Posted by Godfrey Modikwa on Wed 22 Jul 2009 at 02:48 AM