🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JMC.92Jul25123947@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU 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  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  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)