elt@astrovax.UUCP (Ed Turner) (04/27/84)
This may be regarded as a continuation of the recent exchange between Karl Stapelfeldt and myself concerning the true cost of Shuttle missions and whether or not they are a good deal for space science. There are several somewhat related points I would like to make: 1) My colleagues who are primarily space astronomers (I am mainly a ground based optical astronomer.) essentially unanimously regard the 1970's as disastrous for space science. The problem was not so much that major, well advanced (named and well publicized) missions were canceled in great numbers (although the few such losses Karl mentions were painful) as this is conspicuous and politically difficult for NASA. Instead planned missions were delayed and most seriously new mission plans were not developed and will not be in the rather long time lag queue associated with space science. The net result is a sharp decrease in the number of science missions. Some specific examples are number of planned launches of planetary probes has dropped from of order 1 per year to of order 1 or 2 per decade, previously nearly continuous existence of some sort of x-ray astronomy facility in orbit has been replaced with a roughly 15 year gap (that's half an astronomer's productive career!) between EINSTEIN and AXAF, and no plans for radio interferometry experiments in space (which were being widely discussed and anticipated in the 70's). The big space astronomy events of 80's such as Space Telescope and COBE were originally planned for the 70's (or very early 80's). In essence NASA can spend less and less on space science without every canceling anything (except time critical missions such as the Halley probe) just by delaying everything in the pipeline more and more. 2) Less critical but still scientifically very costly, NASA canceled essentially all support for ground based observations and most funds for theoretical work in support of space missions. 3) I don't know to what extent astronomy's problems extend to other areas of space science, but my impression is that they were general. 4) I believe these problems have been widely recognized in the scientific community. For instance, George Keyworth (the President's Science Advisor) in his review of the Reagan administration science policy (SCIENCE 1984, Vol. 224, No. 4644 (April 6), pp. 9-13) in an attempt to reassure the scientific community about the space station program states "We are all aware of the lesson of the impact of the Shuttle program on space sciences in the 1970's-and we are not about to see that happen again." The space astronomy community dreads the space station like the plague as far as I can tell. In a more informal comment at the Jan. 1984 Las Vegas AAS meeting, Keyworth was even more blunt calling the Shuttle "a disaster for astronomers" again in an attempt to reassure them relative to the space station project. 5) These problems occurred because in the face of declining budgets and Shuttle budget over runs in the 1970's, NASA gave the Shuttle program priority over space science programs. Karl argues this should be blamed not on the Shuttle but rather on the Federal government for its inadequate and inconsistent funding of NASA. Well, yes and no. You could blame the Shuttle project for being too expensive, or NASA for having the wrong priorities, or the Feds for poor support of NASA, or the general population for electing such a government and tolerating such budgeting, or human nature for being so shortsighted, or evolution for producing human nature, or ... Obviously, there is an infinite regression of reasons. In practise one must pick some level to operate on an attempt to influence things there instead of simply referring blame and responsibility to some higher but uninfuencable level. Most scientists feel that they can little influence the overall popular and political support for NASA (except perhaps in some long term sense by trying to educate the public) but that they can try to get NASA to slice up its portion of the pie differently. This in the final analysis is the reason for the criticism of the Shuttle program among space scientists. 6) My personal view is that the manned space program is now and always has been a serious deficit for science but that it is important for other non-scientific reasons. The Shuttle program was good tactics but poor strategy for the manned space program in my opinion. Ed Turner astrovax!elt
cozadde@trsvax.UUCP (05/09/84)
#R:astrovax:-31600:trsvax:56000015:000:1822 trsvax!cozadde May 9 11:32:00 1984 To: Ed Turner astrovax I, too, think the manned space program was a waste of money, but only the part between the X-20 Dyna-soar and the space shuttle. The entire part of the manned space program that includes the Mercury project through the Apollo project was a publicity stunt dreamed up by the Kennedy admin. If the X-20 had been completed and the space shuttle (which uses mostly 1965-1970 technology) had been started on time, the space scientist types would be complaining about not getting enough money for their 1000 kilometer base-line radio tele- scope in Lunar orbit or their 10,000 inch optical telescope in Lagrangen-4 or 5 orbit. So, the manned space program lost between 10 to 20 years (more than half of a hopeful astronaut's career) to a publicity stunt. Maybe if we worked together, we can make up for some lost time. Instead, it seems the 'space' scientists would rather sit at the bottom of a 100 mile well of dirty air that is getting more polluted by the day. I have heard the IRAS unmanned telescope was able to produce more infor- mation in 1 day than an earth bound telescope could produce in a year. What kind of productivity would a manned IRAS type tele- scope in Lunar orbit have in contrast to an unmanned IRAS in LEO. In conclusion, there is a saying that has a collolary: In your life some rain must fall, but it might wash the dust from your eyes and your mouth if used properly. If the 'space' scientists would get behind and push for the manned space program instead of throwing rocks all the time, the benefits they may receive could be greater than they could ever hope for by clinging to the dust of the earth. lt. of marines David E. Cozad Chairman DFW SpacePac ...microsoft!trsvax!cozadde ...ctvax!trsvax!cozadde