Not Everyone Drinks the SMD Koolaid
Planetary Exploration Newsletter Editorial from Mark Sykes: Mars Science Laboratory
“MSL lands this evening, but our community will not be “forever changed.” I disagree with Jim Green, NASA Planetary Science Division Director … We are weakened by bad policy recommendations and decisions of the past ten years, crippling the former workhorse Discovery program and canceling the Mars Scout program, while backroom deals are pursued to allocate yet more resources to large, uncompeted projects. The greatest challenge facing U.S. solar system exploration is making the transition from an adolescent focus on firsts to rebuilding our foundational programs and embracing science as “the endless frontier.”
Note from James Green, Director Planetary Science, NASA on Mars Curiosity Rover Landing, earlier post
Very good. Mark Sykes appears to me to have his priorities straight. NASA can’t keep throwing money at large, unfinished (and often infinishable) programs, especially those with limited or no specific goals, at the expense of smaller, incremental programs which have been giving us ever more and better science and technology. The worth of a program is not reflected by its budget, unlike what many at NASA and in government seem to assume.
Steve
NASA can’t keep throwing money at large, unfinished (and often
infinishable) programs,..
As long as the Congress critters representing districts with certain NASA centers are on key budget committees, they will.
NASA has always been a high tech pork delivery system that coincidentally produces some interesting science.
It is worthwhile to try to land a one ton payload as precisely as possible. Success or failure, we will learn from this. If you’re just looking for science results then yes, small mini payloads are a more surefire way to do it. If you want to eventually setup a robotic multi-ton factory, precisely situated on Mars then we had better start trying to place large payloads. Just my thoughts. I wish the best for MSL and my very best wishes are with a one ton semi-autonomous robot about to land on Mars, one way or the other. Victory, smile on our enterprise!
Mark makes an excellent point. This isn’t so much about MSL as a project, which is wonderful, but selling out smaller missions that really develop the neurons of planetary scientists in favor of glamorous and hugely expensive missions. Of course, JWST has been exactly that for astrophysics, and a much more shameful one. NASA astrophysics is pretty dead for the next decade, thanks to JWST. Let’s hope the scientists who bought into the promise of JWST get to write their papers before they retire, whereupon their lasting legacy is some truly excellent science, but also a community that is struggling desperately to stay afloat, and a damnable reluctance by everyone to EVER do a flagship mission again. We could name a hole in the ground after these Webbsters.
If MSL was drinking the KoolAid, JWST is about ending up under the table, unconscious, smelling of Tequila.
Hey students. If you’re thinking about going into space astrophysics, you might want to have a shot and think hard about it. At least Planetary Astronomy still has most of their budget and some real hopes. Astrophysics does not.
The same lesson, about “adolescent firsts” applies equally well to human space flight. But one would have thought the science community would be smarter than that.
Helen,
I hear what you’re saying about astrophysics in terms of money and opportunities, but I would never discourage anyone from studying astrophysics, even if not as a major, because it is becoming more and more of an intersection with many other branches of physics and chemistry, a genuine crossroads. I would hate to see major discoveries go unnoticed because the crucial interdisciplinary knowledge wasn’t available.
So many big names, including Hawking, have dedicated their careers to uniting branches of physics, particularly the very large with the very small (i.e., quantum gravity), and I have to assume they know what they’re doing. I believe that astrophysics is more important to science now than ever before and we need to find ways to convince the money people of this. Of course, it’s a lot harder since they don’t “speak the language.” The US government killed the super collider; don’t let them start at the other end and kill astrophysics, too.
Steve
Steve – thank you for very sensible comments. Let me make it clear, however, that with regard to space astrophysics, it isn’t a matter of the scientific importance being lacking. It’s a matter of near-term professional opportunity. An incoming graduate student might get associated with a JWST science group, in which case he or she may get some science out of it in eight years. If not, then they’re looking at a serious dearth of other worthy projects. The Astrophysics division used to have a rich future mission portfolio, covering many different subfields. It doesn’t any longer, largely thanks to JWST.
That’s not to say that JWST isn’t a scientifically superb project. It is. But it may not be programmatically superb, in terms of what is best to advance the whole field.
If MSL was drinking the KoolAid, JWST is about ending up under the table, unconscious, smelling of Tequila.
You don’t seem to understand what the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid” refers to (Jim Jones and so on). It means following someone or an organization’s beliefs or philosophy without questioning or critical examination until it leads to one’s demise or destruction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Hopefully, MSL tonight (and JWST in the future) won’t come to that.
Let me explain it to you.
The Astrophysics community, about a decade ago, got some totally bogus, off the cuff, estimates on the likely cost of JWST. Of order less than $1B. They loved it. They positively chugged that Kool-Aid. But as the cost estimates rose, and the project ate their contingencies and eventually defaulted on their cost commitments to the agency, the JWST science community continued to valiantly defend the program. As the cost overrun became so serious that other missions plans got killed to pay for it, and the whole fabric of the space astronomy community was being torn (there’s your “demise and destruction”, if you like), the JWST science community just sucked it up. At this point, I’m guessing that it was more than Kool Aid they were drinking. It must have been something a lot stronger than that. Something that resulted perhaps in loss of consciousness. Were they facing the problem head on? Nope. They were under the table.
We’re not talking about killing people. We’re talking about programmatic paralysis and the expiration of dreams.
Yes, I hope both MSL and (far in the future!) JWST succeed. But even if they do, the damage has already been done. Let’s hope we’ve learned something.
Helen,
A lot of what you said makes sense, but I have to say Gonzo is right. In both your original comments and in your reply to Gonzo, you seem to totally miss the point of what “drinking the Kool Aid” means. It really undermines your points.
The Kool Aid of Jonestown, from which the metaphor derives, was poisoned. Everyone who drank the Kool Aid died.
To most people, the metaphor “drinking the Kool Aid” is equivalent to “drinking the deadly poison because they don’t question it”.
Substitute the phrase “deadly poison” for Kool Aid in your quotes and see how it sounds: “At this point, I’m guessing that it was more than deadly poison they were
drinking. It must have been something a lot stronger than that.
Something that resulted perhaps in loss of consciousness.”
It makes no sense to talk about something “stronger” than deadly poison that will result “perhaps in loss of consciousness”.
Not to drift too far off topic, but in the context used by the original poster, it’s referring to a different meaning: The electric kool-aid acid test.
I wholly agree with the JWST comments otherwise, though. It’s a waste of that much money.
I’m not sure where you get a reference to the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test from Keith’s headline. The much more common usage of the phrase “drink the Kool Aid” is the Jonestown reference, and the context of the headline fits perfectly for that reference.
In the spirit of this thoughtful space policy discussion (speaking of adolescent focus!), let me add a final point. While drinking cyanide laced Koolaid will kill you if you drink enough of it, once you’re dead, nothing really matters anymore. That’s the act of just checking out. You’re gone. You’re out of the way. Being dead drunk when you’re supposed to be acting responsibly is where you wake up to witness the consequences, and you realize they’re about you. It’s the hangover that hurts, folks.
I doubt Keith was implying that NASA Planetary Science was killing itself by not investing in smaller missions and infrastructure. That’s certainly not what Mark was saying. What Mark said was that Planetary Science was “weakened by bad policy”. I have to assume that Keith used this Koolaid metaphor as a process, not as a result. I guess if you drink a little cyanide, it’ll weaken you. Please don’t hesitate to explore in detail the symptomatic response to small quantities of cyanide. That would be, er, fascinating.
Pardon me for checking out of this odd conversation, so I can bathe in the pride and success of Curiosity. But I’ll save my margarita’s to toast JWST.
My point is that you are not using the expression “drinking the Kool Aid” correctly.
MSL just demonstrated that cannibalizing the budgets of other, smaller missions DOES lead to success. JPL will use this as a precedent for the next time they need rob other’s Peters to pay for their Paul.
This happens over and over again, and not just in NASA. SSC is another prominent example – see that LHC found Higgs, and not that far out of the range of the Tevatron.
The attraction for “big” in science attracts “big” in politics. The seduction starts always … smaller … but grows insatiable, till a peculiar madness takes over. The process and its resultant are invariably the same. But still we don’t learn.
At its heart, is the nature of a culture that grows used to overreach, to going beyond where rational budgets / scales / returns / … suggest limits. We begin as a people, a body politic, a group of scientists / policy makers / industrialists, a electorate … to believe it is our “manifest destiny” to prove these bounds false, as if they are, like with MSL’s rappel down the bridle, a calculated risk. Even worse, many in America extoll ignorance in many forms, and rely on it to drown out rational thought with ignorant “shout downs”.
We collectively create these situations, and they will continue until we collectively refuse to blithely let the boundaries be crossed. My point here is this is a multiple point failure, more common these days by an idiot culture that thrives on ignorant polarization instead of informed, debated unity. And, we let the masses be swayed by peculiar institutions, such that they become angry and cynical with every new failure.
I’ll tell you I wasn’t enthused with MSL, especially at the start. For it had the smell of “overreach”. But I have been won over, belatedly, by its audacity. And I’m very much looking forward to the best.
But SSC – many of us thought that had crossed over into “uber pork land”, long past reason. And we were right – the extension of the Tevatron in Batavia was the correct for time, budget, and capabilities. But the overreach, like with JWST / CxP / SLS / … is just to seductive. All you have to do is come up with a “America’s great, can do the biggest things” sloganeering for the masses … and the monster’s off and running again.
That’s not right. America’s great for the skill, not just the power, to do incredible things. It’s not the impossibly big accelerator / rocket / rover … as much as the EDL skill to deliver that rover, the beam control / superconducting magnet design for that accelerator, the ability to sustain a HSF exploration program better / longer than anyone on the planet.
But we don’t because we’d rather be ignorant and in the thrall of an insane pride. As a nation, we don’t know ourself.
So we’d rather like our false image … than our true greatness. Which is greater.
Congratulations to the MSL team, JPL, NASA, & the US!
It’s down and sending pictures. incredible technical achievement. without a hitch. almost perfection. the sky crane actually worked! almost too good to believe.
The whole entry,landing procedure went like clockwork and was a credit to the momentous teamwork that occurred that resulted in the landing. It made me proud to witness such an event the Americans can be proud of.