NASA's Starvation Diet For Planetary Science
Wow. NASA is currently have a Town Hall meeting and essentially telling planetary scientists to look for new jobs. Wow.
— Mike Brown (@plutokiller) December 3, 2013
NASA’s Planetary Science Shift Rattles Researchers, Science
“Jim Green, the head of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, shook things up for planetary scientists this week by announcing a restructuring that will change how the division funds grant proposals. … That’s why some researchers–including Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona–have been railing against the restructuring on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Sykes says the change Green has made is ill-considered because it doesn’t take into account the impact on the workforce. “There are many people whose research programs and salaries depend upon successfully proposing to several major programs in 2014,” Sykes says. “They have just learned that there will be no opportunity for these programs until 2015. I have had several people tell me that if there is no regular … call at the regular time in 2014, they will have to look for other employment in a year. There are postdocs whose positions are ending this next year, who would have applied to these programs to get started as independent planetary scientists. They need to find something else to do.”
When it comes to planetary science will NASA soon stand for NADA?, Houston Chronicle
“Let’s start with a town hall meeting (watch it here) that occurred on Tuesday during which NASA’s $1.2 billion planetary science division announced a restructuring of how it funds research and analysis. Restructuring is a nice euphemism here. Due to budget cuts, in essence, NASA officials announced that it would not seek new research grant submissions in 2014.”
NASA funding shuffle alarms planetary scientists, Nature
“But at the town-hall meeting, NASA’s Jonathan Rall said that funding proposals in this field are not likely to be due until February 2015. That was the last straw for many researchers who live from grant to grant, because most of their existing funding is likely to expire well before money becomes available for the new Solar System workings area. Outraged scientists vented their frustration in the comments section of the meeting website and on Twitter. “People are upset with not knowing where their next paycheck is going to come from, how they’re going to pay the mortgage,” says Schmidt.”
Comments Transcript: NASA Planetary Science Division Research and Analysis Program Restructuring Virtual Town Hall
“Michael H. New: [personal, non-official, comment] The degree to which the field shrinks is driven by the budget and the number of hard-money positions available. Regardless of how PSD’s solicitations are organized, when the budget is flat and there are few hard-money positions available, people will be forced to leave the field. [end]”
(Update) SMD Planetary Town Hall: Time For Planetary Scientists To Job Hunt, Earlier post
Out of many of the missions NASA does, I think I cherish planetary science the most. This makes me want to throw up.
Bill Nye, CEO of Planetary Society is asking the President for $1.5B for Planetary Science. Obama allocated only $1.3B. Alabama’s Morris Brooks is willing to socialize SLS, ISS and Orion. Forget about termination fees. That is a guise for ensuring that pork barrel continues on SLS and Orion and ISS. He is also willing to micro-manage NASA. If the Planetary Society and other advocacy groups are willing to sell out, they need to up their share. $1.5B is not enough. Raise it to $1.7B or $1.8B in trade for H.R. 3625. But their selling out to gain proper funding for Planetary Science will mean damaging NASA plans for exploration and raising the cost to taxpayers. The holding of $500M by contractors to ensure they get termination fees is a small sum to SLS and Orion. The contractors will receive termination fees any which way. Brooks is a low grade politician – calling others “socialists” while creating legislation that leads to excessive spending, “micro-managing” in order to ensure his career, his seat and re-election.
“Green responded to the community’s angst in a statement emphasizing future missions .. a Mars rover that is due to launch in 2020”
Fire scientists that are crunching the data from current missions and shut down these missions ( Cassini , MSL ) to pay for yet another multibillion dollar mars rover that does not even follow the science priorities set by Decadal Survey ?
I almost wonder if that’s a deliberate attempt to indirectly do cutbacks on Planetary Science. Don’t cut the grant proposals directly – just push them off in the future, so that when they start doing grants again in 2015 there will be fewer of them left.
Probably not. My guess is that this is about saving Cassini or Curiosity, considering the earlier article on how NASA might be forced by sequestration to choose between the two of them.
I don’t know why this is surprising to anyone. The entire space science/exploration sector is in massive contraction. There will be lots of us out of jobs in the coming months.
Ed Stone was asked by Colbert, “do you ever get angry at the astronauts with their ticker tape parades” while planetary scientists “are humping it day and night to learn about the Solar neighborhood?”. Ed answered, “No, we are having too much fun.” That is very true but now with “flat being the new up” and SLS, ISS and Orion — i.e. the Astronauts, taking a larger slice of the pie, planetary scientists aren’t smiling. After Colbert, we need Ed Stone to speak up for what is right for NASA not just for Planetary Science. SMD, Planetary, has been willing to live with their limitations over decades while HEOMD, manned program, squanders $Billions (Morris Brooks). Let us not forget 14 astronauts. Either you ask for more than $1.5B or lay down the gauntlet and force the hard choices in HEOMD programs.
Rocky,
While I agree with you in principle, not Ed Stone. He’s given so much for so long to planetary science that I think he’s earned the right to finish out his time in peace, doing what he wants rather than battling it out with the deaf and dumb opposition.
NASA: “We’re building the world’s biggest rocket so that we can… can… can do some cool stuff… that I’m sure we’ll get around to figuring out eventually…! We’re also… er… Look, we’re building the world’s biggest rocket! What else do you want from us, blood?!?”
Is there anyone willing to stand up and say SLS is killing science? I’d be glad to do it, but no one listens to me.
I would say the JWST telescope and the Curiosity overruns did as much damage as the SLS, most of all Space Science’s credibility.
I agree JWST and Curiosity are damaging to SMD credibility, but in terms of total dollars SLS/Orion are not only larger in annual cost, they are slated to go on costing perhaps $3B a year, potentially forever.
$3 Billion a year for added capability (Super Heavy Lift) is a very small price to pay. My biggest problem with the JWST is that it’s a one-off, born because a large-diameter launcher didn’t exist. It’s biggest technological investment and advance, the folding mirror, only exists because of the need to squeeze something of this size into an Ariane 5. With the SLS flying, the JWST’s successor will have single large mirror, or fold into far fewer pieces.
There is a certain justification to MSL’s great expense in that it was partially designed as a standard template for future rovers (more capable than the MER platform). That argument can’t be made for JWST, and that is the very definition of “big waste of money” in my book. I look at the NRO, which came up with the general KH-11 Kennan design in the 1970s, of which the Hubble Space Telescope is a sister device, and has launched and evolved it 20 times over the decades, to the point where two and a half spares they just so happen to have lying around get donated, and have such capability, that they’ll allow WFIRST to be more ambitious rather than less ambitious.
That’s how you do technology development. You build a foundation, a basic platform and build on that over decades. The JWST is the exact opposite. It’s successor will be nothing like it. It’s technology has no other applications. As expensive as SLS is… as wasteful as it is to launch people… I would say the JWST represents an even more profane waste. It’s an $8.9 billion dead end.
I agree a more evolutionary strategy might be a better choice. However the unfolding mechanism itself is not an overwhelming part of the cost since some sort of figure adjustment is needed. Launch will be on an Atlas.
Why would a space agency need a planetary science division?… You have got to be kidding me
The Decadal Survey is inherently flawed, which has led to this reduction. The only beneficiaries are a few PhD’s. HSF has a broad constituency to support the program. If Planetary Scientists want to expand their budget, they should rank their projects toward work which helps realize the economic development of Martian, lunar, and asteroid resources. Most Geologists today work to help in mining and fossil fuel extraction, not as pure science investigators.
With today’s headline about the President and Eric Cantor promoting computer science education as a necessary skill for the future, the nation’s priorities are clear–and sadly it doesn’t include space exploration. All those planetary scientists looking for work should go back to school and become computer scientists. Instead of exploring real worlds, they should be designing virtual worlds for fun and profit. Said, sarcastically.