Discouraging The Next Generation From A Career In Space
Keith’s note: Joe Rothenberg, former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight and former Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, had this to say last night on LinkedIn: “What is happening at NASA has long term and potentially unrecoverable consequences to U.S. scientific and technology leadership in not only space but in technology that impacts our quality of life on Earth. Clearly the actions of the current Administration and NASA leadership have mortgaged America’s space and scientific research capabilities, well beyond the point of being able to be recovered by any potential restoration of funding by Congress. The nation’s space program in its early days inspired career pursuits in science and engineering, resulting in not only America’s leadership in space, but in developing technology that has significantly improved medical, communications, and numerous quality of life applications. America now faces the strong possibility of the reverse happening, the indiscriminate cuts in our nation’s scientific research program budgets, and government and civilian workforce, will discourage the next generation from pursuing careers in engineering and sciences. The implications of which are not only loss of leadership in these areas, but also a signicant weakening of our economic and military leadership and a continued downward position of the U.S. on the world stage.”
14 responses to “Discouraging The Next Generation From A Career In Space”
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Sadly, spot on.
Well said.
It isn’t just NASA or the space industry. ALL science in the US is under attack from hard right fundamentalist conservatives as part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. They are slashing federal funding to science power houses like the NIH in favor of issuing “block grants” to individual states. This is already killing critical research on things like Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. Far from “making America Great”, the Right is setting this country up to be absolutely dead last in the world with respect to scientific research and new technology development. We may never recover.
Lots of sacred cows are gonna get gored due to mind-boggling fiscal mismanagement for decades by politicians of both parties and all stripes. I’m worried about not only recovering from a science research collapse, but recovering from a societal collapse when our $37 trillion deficit house
[Rant deleted] America can never recover from this assault on intelligence and science. Someday history will look back on this administration, this congress, this supreme court, and this president and mark this as the unrecoverable errors that ended the once proud and intrinsically good and just democracy called the United States of America. The barbarians have pushed past the gates, destroyed the sentries and are in control of the treasury. Only the inevitable downfall and fadeout now awaits us all.
I am not so sure I believe in the deficit boogyman that the right is always isn’t to justify their draconian policies. The deficit has been in the trillions for decades now and the economy has not ‘fallen apart’ as conservatives are always claiming it will. One thing is certain, however: it’s not going to get fixed by cutting taxes for the rich. The 1% are going to have to make some sacrifices if they want to fix the deficit.
…right is always USING…
Exactly right! The 1%-5% needs to pay up after decades of subsidies and tax breaks. It’s Exactly as Bernie Standers has stated way back when. In case ya’ll are unaware,there was a fixed number of taxed income for everyone up to about 250k including millionaires and billionaires. I think it’s been changed now,however, I think it’s way too late. 😡
“The deficit has been in the trillions for decades now and the economy has not ‘fallen apart’ as conservatives are always claiming it will. ”
Textbook example of normalcy bias.
But yet DOD gets a fat budget for more pie in the sky tech. Go somewhere else with that BS.
Projects that develop hardware to support science research should be managed by project managers and not principal investigators. In a sanely-managed world the one who pays the piper gets to call the tune, yet cost of science research was increasingly-funded by the government to the point of being exclusive.
The braindrain has been almost immediate, at least at the university level. Our physics department saw an entire research group leave for Europe and multiple grad students have jumped ship. I’ve heard scuttlebutt that applications have dropped off, too, but I can’t speak to that. Can’t say I blame them. Looking into moving to greener (read: funded) pastures myself.
…of cards falls. As it will.
Nobody cares, at least not enough people care. This country is now firmly rooted in stupidity and we all know it. We have no choice but to sit back and watch it all play out. We know exactly how it all started and what the consequences will be, but the average voter doesn’t care and that’s that. Maybe someone should write a complete history of how it all went down along with an exact step by step outline of how to fix it then just drop the mic…