NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/sci/physics/11682

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-26 | 3.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!mailer.cc.fsu.edu!sun13!ds8.scri.fsu.edu!jac
From: [e-mail] (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: "What's New" July-24-1992
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 Jul 92 20:41:53 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University
Lines: 58

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>My opinion is that the physicists are mistaken about the space
>station, imagining they could get some of the money saved by the
>cancellation.

No, but the converse is true: science funding in the NSF would probably
suffer along with space science if it were funded and there was no
change in the way Congress constructs it budgets.  Congress has used
a system that allocates funds in major categories as part of the process
by which budgets are established.  This includes the much publicized
"firewall" between defense and civilian spending (which may be breached
or sidesteped with the move of LAMPF to DoD funding), plus the less
widely known grouping of HUD, NASA, and NSF in the "independent agencies"
part of the budget.

Thus only a few changes can compensate for the large spending increase
needed to build the space station: HUD can be cut, NSF can be cut, or
spending can be reallocated within NASA.  You are wrong if you think
that physicists are the only scientists opposed to the spacestation.
I know several space scientists who oppose it because it will most
likely kill off unmanned exploration of the planets.  Some biologists
are concerned that it will be classified as life science research and
hurt their projects.  Physicists have mainly worked just to make it
clear that they find the proposed design worthless for the material
science research that has been alleged to be a reason to build it.

>The reason for the space station is only marginally science and
>even more marginally prestige.  The space station is a start on
>human expansion into the solar system.  That is what generates
>the public support for it.  It may not be the best design, but
>it's the only design we have, and the scientist opposition has
>made matters worse, not better.

I wish NASA was as forthright as you are, since then the design could
be judged on that specific question.  My concern is that the plan
will not meet that goal either, since it seems to get worse with
time rather than better -- and that NASA originally said that they
could build a space station for an amount that is less than they
have spent on design studies so far.

>The physicists have had their heads wedged about space ever since
>World War II, perhaps from guilt feelings about the atomic bomb.

First time I have heard this.  Physicists have backed the space
program and provided it with skilled talent since the beginning.
My older colleagues tell me of times when NASA hired large fractions
of entire Ph.D. graduating classes, in the days before there were
programs for aerospace engineering.  I still think a space station
could be a good idea, but it would need to be put up with a heavy
lift vehicle and it might make a lot more sense if it looked and
cost more like Skylab.  The pity is that Skylab was not kept up
there for use over the past decade.

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I
[e-mail]                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)