Category Archives: money

money, NASA

NASA Thoughts

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Future Thoughts

The past couple of entries are focused on NASA and its budget woes. I hate to see it happen to an agency that still does more with its money before breakfast than most other agencies combined do all day long. That’s not to say that NASA doesn’t have its problems, but when you look at what the agency does with the money it gets, it’s pretty much been a blueprint for our future in science and technology.

But, this is as much about NASA today as it is about the sciences, and how we approach them in our time. Back when I was a kid, we were about to land people on the Moon. There was  huge push for more science in the schools. Lots of planetarium facilities got built because people saw a value in teaching about space travel and astronomy.  And, there’s absolutely everything right about that. Science helps us understand our world, our cosmos from the physical point of view.  And, NASA has been a big part of that.

Today, several decades later, the dreams of space travel and exploration are still there, but as I pointed out a few entries ago, they’re held slightly differently by different generations. The up-and-coming folks want to “experience” and “know” science, not just dwell on the glories of the past.  More power to ’em. It’s a way of knowing that you can’t discount, particularly in the face of so many on this planet who would rather push twaddle about creationist fantasies or alien abductions, or ill-thought-out rants against science and technology that show more ignorance and intolerance than they do rational thought.

This is why I still think NASA is one of our best avenues to the future for technological advance and exploration. So, yeah, it does hurt to see it pinched to the bone; forced to cut one program to pay for another, when the waste from other programs our taxpayer dollars fund could easily keep NASA from having to make do with its relatively small budget (compared to others I pointed out yesterday).

I’m the kid who built an Apollo capsule for her junior high science project (my folks helped). I’m the one who expected to be living on the Moon in my dotage. And, I’m the one who logs in every day to see the latest pictures from Mars, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and other fantastic places in the cosmos. NASA (and its sibling programs in Europe and Asia) brings us those things; it also brings us ways of knowing that are unmatched in human history.  So, yeah, I’d like to see NASA get more money. Every dollar spent at NASA gets paid to someone who pays their house payment, feeds their kids, pays taxes, and brings us priceless knowledge.

astrophysics, Commentary, funding, money, Opinion

Defunding Astronomy in the UK

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The Role of Money in Astronomy

So, all this astronomy I write about costs money to do. That isn’t a surprise to anybody, I hope. Everything in life has some cost to it, whether in money, karma, time, personal involvement, or ethical reward. While it is true that you can walk outside, look up, and do astronomy at the very basic level, to do anything beyond that requires equipment and person-hours. And those cost money.Amateur astronomy equipment can cost as little as the price of a book of star maps and a pair of 10×50 binoculars or run to many thousands of dollars or Euros or whatever units of money you use for a top-of-the-line home observatory. I always tell people to start small and let the love of astronomy guide them to whatever seems appropriate to spend.Professional astronomy is a whole different ball game. No one person “owns” a big observatory like Yerkes or Anglo-Australian or Mt. Wilson or Gemini or Hubble Space Telescope or the Very Large Array. They’re operated by consortiums of institutions based in a number of countries. It’s about the only way that the enormous costs of running state-of-the-art astrophysical research facilities can be afforded. And the costs can be … well… astronomical, running into multiple millions of dollars/Euros/etc. each year. The consortiums (and their countries) help pay the bills, and in return, each member of the consortium gets time on the instrument(s).

Recently the Gemini partnership was shaken when the United Kingdom announced it was pulling out to save money. I don’t know all the politics that led to this decision, but it took UK astronomers by surprise. The result of that pullout would have denied UK astronomers access to a major Northern Hemisphere observatory, starting nearly immediately.

It made little sense, but in times of tightening budgets, I suppose that the science and technology committee in the UK that made this decision didn’t see astronomy as being as important as other physics expenditures it wanted to make, or perhaps much less important than life sciences, for example. Nonetheless, it was a surprise to the partnership and a shock to the world’s astronomy community.

Today the Royal Astronomical Society announced that the UK is in “constructive discussions” to continue UK involvement in the Gemini Partnership. President of the RAS, Dr. Michael Rowan-Robinson commented, “The UK has invested about 35 million pounds in the capital phase of the Gemini Observatories, in which we have a 23% stake. To pull out precipitately, as seemed to be happening, would have written this off to make a saving of 4 million pounds a year, at the expense of inflicting great damage to the UK’s international reputation.”

That is a lot of money to invest, and UK astronomers had every right to feel betrayed by their government’s actions in the attempted pullout. Astronomy IS worth the money and the effort, and I suspect that UK scientists will need to make sure their collective voice is heard the next time somebody suggests “cost-saving” measures such as this one.