Its Time For More Reboot Projects
Researchers reel from defunding of only UC-owned observatory, The Daily Californian
“[Alex] Filippenko and other researchers blame fellow astronomer Steven Beckwith, the former UC vice president of research and graduate studies, for inappropriately acting on personal biases against Lick Observatory. Beckwith, Filippenko pointed out, is a former director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and has publicly belittled the merits of ground-based telescopes, such as those at Lick, in comparison to space-based instruments, such as Hubble telescope. “The guy has openly expressed in rather contemptuous ways his lack of interest in ground-based telescopes,” said Garth Illingworth, a UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy. “He views himself as a person to choose the direction of UC astronomy like a CEO in a company. But that’s not his job.” … In June 2013, the UCO Board recommended the university terminate all funding for Lick. Following suit, UCOP will implement a “glide path” for Lick in 2016, phasing out all funding from $1.3 million to zero by 2018.”
Save the Greenbank Telescope, Greenbriar Valley Economic Development Corporation
“On August 14, 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences Portfolio Review Committee issued a report entitled: Advancing Astronomy in the Coming Decade; Opportunities and Challenges. In that report, the NSF recommended that two NRAO instruments, the GBT and the Very Long Based Array (VLBA) in New Mexico, be fully divested from the NSF Astronomy Division’s research facilities portfolio within five years.”
This is not good. Lick has telescopes that can still do good science.
The situation here sounds eerily familiar. Advertise and justify something as scientific, when the real value is participatory. This makes for trouble later when arguing on others terms, rather than arguing for the importance of a participatory science opportunity for researchers young and old. NASA’s sounding rocket program has suffered the same situation. Try to justify the program based on science, then get screwed when the program is told to focus only on that scientific return, contract out all the work, remove the hand’s on, participatory experience from NASA researchers, and then lose the support of that same research community. It’s the same death spiral.
Admit it is a hands-on, participatory experience, a form of training, with a chance for innovative thinking both during and in the future, and fight that case. Increasingly convenient knowledge has wiped out many opportunities to tinker in our lives. Why have the kids take the telescope out one night to see tiny dots of light when you can browse beautiful Hubble pictures on a tablet app. And so, the chance to tinker is lost, the chance to do something other than push a couple of buttons on a screen. This is part of this syndrome. Fight for the value of hand’s on, participatory opportunity, and don’t let anyone put that experience down as antiquated or irrelevant or not competitive. Oh, and find yourself a millionaire with a grant in perpetuity the University would be too embarrassed to turn down (a side grant to another part of the University being the key).
I’d put it a bit differently. The sort of hands-on work you describe isn’t just training. It is how already-trained people invent new things. They get a good idea and fiddle around to make it work. Note, for example, that the technique Marcy and Butler used to discover extrasolar planets is something they invented and tested at Lick (on the 0.6m CAT, which isn’t one of Lick’s main telescopes although it feeds the same spectrometer as the big 120 inch.)
Also, when it comes to getting millionaires involved, Lick Observatory and the Hamilton Spectrometer (the back-end used by Marcy and Butler, above) were both funded by very rich people.
Now its time for citizens to help out!
There is much wisdom in the above statement!
The ISEE-3 Reboot Team was able to come up with a compelling reason for folks to donate – and they did. Having been the prime fundraiser for that effort, I have to think that there are things that can be done with these amazing telescope resources that would be equally worthy of citizen support.
The scale here is a bit different, though, yes? Lick needs to be endowed, to protect it into the future. $25-odd million would do it.
Surely UC, with a famous historic facility near Silicon Valley as the beneficiary, can rustle up $25 million in three years, can’t it?
numbers_guy101’s ideas could form the core of a highly-successful development campaign to endow the facility in perpetuity,
It may not be that simple. Lick is also competing against larger projects–GMT, TMT, EELT, and others–that are searching for funding to be able to begin/finish construction. Even those projects are struggling or have struggled in the past. I’d argue that it’s increasingly difficult to get funding for pure science, and that’s a very sad statement.
I can’t speak for other countries, but the US seems to be put a very low priority on pure science or science in general.
So true: we’ve become a ‘show me the money’ country. A recent story about the value of a college education, for example, focused on the cost vs lifelong salary, missing the value of an informed citizenry as well as the intrinsic value of knowledge.
(I have an undergraduate degree in Classics- believe me, I know about this phenomena. While my post-graduate degree yielded a career, I would never change my education trajectory).
And this is hardly a new phenomenon; remember the SCSC? Would have been much more powerful than that wonderful thingie over across the pond, now just an empty tunnel.
Moreover, our House of Representatives is dominated by the ‘I’m not a scientist’ types. And there will be more and more of them.
Finally, why do we need to study these things when we can look in the Book for answers and the end times are nigh?
Please don’t get me started on the ol’ Texas super collider. What a fiasco and a perfect example of short sightedness.
I think the idea of universities “rustling up” money easily is funny. It’s probably a good time to review what’s happened with funding of universities (and education in general) over the last 10-20 years.
What’s happened is pretty simple: the Federal government and the House turned higher education over to high-interest banks. Not complicated. It’s another pew in the Church of the Free Market.
And the worst part of it? College has become so expensive that return becomes the primary focus.
We require everyone to graduate high school in this country (more or less). And we pay for it. The return to the country of an educated citizenry is beyond calculation. A similar approach to higher education would yield incredible bounty.
Sure, lots of kids aren’t college material through ability or preference, but advanced training in whatever field would return to the country far more than the expense.
A number of people donated, Keith, based on your personal–charm? 🙂
Seriously. People know you and they know Dennis. They know your projects and have seen how you make things happen (McMoon, Everest, Mars in Greenland, for example). It engenders confidence.
I flew over Lick today, and admired it from on high. I have fond memories of the observatory since I was the only person to get final Jeopardy by identifying it (Philanthropists was the category.. I think the answer was “James Lick’s ashes are here” or something like that). Lick was an interesting guy.. incredibly wealthy, donated most of his estate to scientific endeavors.
I think the ideas here are excellent and I’ll pledge my donation right now. I’m not the person to organize this, but I hope someone who can organize such an effort will pick this up.