Shuttle Squeezes Science in Space Program

Courtesy of NASA When the space shuttle Columbia erupted into flames on re-entry, killing its crew of seven astronauts, criticism of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration grew to a fever pitch. Attackers came from all sides. Government experts wanted to know where the money was going, and science policy gurus questioned whether NASA could not better use its $15 billion (US) yearly allotment. The outcome of this debate and resultant soul-searching is especially relevant to the small but growing community of space scientists, those who depend on NASA for most of their funding and for access to space. In fiscal year 2002, NASA spent more than $380 million on basic research, some $150 million of it on the life sciences. To thousands of NASA grantees, talk about the future of the space program is not just about cocktail party banter; it's about salaries and careers. But agency critics warn that NASA must develop a sound, defensible strategy for its science research. Without that, grantees could be replacing the olives in their martinis with a sign that says, "will work for food." BUDGET A BOON First the good news. In the fiscal year 2004 budget the basic science budget will remain nearly the same as in 2003, with a slight increase to account for inflation. (As of the time of publication of this article, Congress was in conference and expected to pass it soon.) "One of our first priorities is to maintain stability in our funding," says Terri Lomax, the current director of the fundamental biology division of NASA. "We want to ensure grantees that the money will be here now and will be there for the rest of your grant." Until the budget was presented in April, that goal was not a sure thing. "There was a lot of fear that NASA would shift some of its science money into repairing and reconditioning the shuttle fleet for future flights," says Kei Koizumi, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Budget and Policy Program. "Thankfully that didn't happen." That doesn't mean it won't happen in the future, though. The agency has set an ambitious rebuilding program that does not emphasize basic science. It set a target date of March 2004 for the next shuttle launch, and for the next three years there will not be a single space science experiment. Instead, almost all flights will focus on the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). "NASA has locked so much money into the ISS and the shuttle, that when they catch a cold, the science budgets start sneezing," says Joseph Pelton, director of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University. Although Pelton is a supporter of the ISS and shuttle programs, he warns that they will probably continue to sap money away from the rest of NASA as it gets older and creakier. The ISS itself is the subject of much criticism. The station will cost more than $100 billion by the time it is completed and is tens of billions of dollars over budget and decades behind its original construction date. After the explosion of the Columbia, an endpoint is anybody's best guess. Yet NASA is still fully behind it as a strategic objective. The original vision was for the ISS to serve as a floating laboratory. Today, its science goals have been scaled back considerably. Its main purpose now seems to be that of glorified space hotel to host astronauts from various nations. Not every country's space program has become bogged down in the ISS. While the European Space Agency, Russia's space program, and Japan's National Space Development Agency are all committed to the ISS, they have also created daring space science ventures, including several probes to other planets in the solar system. Even some developing nations are aggressively pursuing space programs, with far tinier budgets than NASA's. Both Nigeria and India have launched satellites, Brazil continues to develop a rocket program despite a recent explosion that killed dozens, and China plans to put a taikonaut on the Moon within a decade. Courtesy of NASA PETRI IN SPACE Meanwhile, some are asking if NASA's costly fixation with the ISS is worth it. "Once it does start functioning as a laboratory, what kind of science are we going to do there?" asks Robert Zubrin, a former Lockheed Martin space engineer and now president of the Mars Society, which advocates a manned mission to Mars. "We're sending up ant farms. We spent $100 billion to send ant farms into space! Is that a wise use of resources?" NASA's Lomax disagrees with that argument. At the heart of the agency's science efforts are attempts to understand how gravity affects organisms. "If you think of all the physical forces that influenced evolution, the only one that remained constant throughout life's history on Earth is gravity," she says. "To understand gravity's interaction with biology is to better understand all biology." She points to an experiment with moss which was salvaged from the wreckage of Columbia. "We expected the moss fibers to grow in random directions without gravity's pull, but it grew in a perfect spiral. That suggests that there's some sort of genetic default for growth patterns in the absence of gravity." Such results aren't enough to sway Zubrin, who says the only valuable science produced by NASA in the last three decades came from the Hubble space telescope. He argues that something went wrong with NASA around 1973, when the Apollo project was cancelled. The space shuttle was conceived and designed during the 1970's because, in Zubrin's words, "we figured we would need it some day." Since then, though, NASA's primary goal has been to keep the space shuttle flying, in order to continue to employ some 100,000 people related to the program. "It was designed to be a transportation device to serve a larger strategy, but now it is the strategy," says Zubrin. "The greatest thing lacking in NASA is not money or brilliant minds, it's a goal to be accomplished." As a vocal advocate for a mission to Mars, Zubrin knows what he wants that strategy to be. Biologists should support a mission to Mars too, according to Zubrin. "A journey to Mars would be an exercise in engineering, but its primary importance would be as a microbiology research project," he says. "We need to go there not just so we said we did it, but so that we can learn about life on other planets in order to understand life on ours." While the idea of going to Mars certainly gets most space enthusiasts salivating, it is not the only idea for a strategic vision. Most of the others, though, have little to do with biology. Brad Edwards, former senior scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wants NASA to build a space elevator, a 62,000 mile-long ribbon of nanotube fiber that will haul payloads into space and eliminate the need for rockets. David Criswell, a physicist at the University of Houston's Institute for Space Systems, wants to construct a massive lunar solar energy plant that will beam back to Earth enough electricity for the entire planet. The Pentagon has plans for fleets of satellites filled with chemical lasers to knock down enemy missiles. NASA, meanwhile, waits in the wings for its marching orders. "If we're going to Mars, we're ready. If we're going back to the Moon, we're ready. Whatever the president decides for the future of the space program, we're ready," says Lomax. Sam Jaffe can be reached at sjaffe@the-scientist.com. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Shuttle Squeezes Science in Space Program

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