{"id":1463,"date":"2007-05-31T07:16:36","date_gmt":"2007-05-31T07:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/05\/31\/easterbrook-in-space\/"},"modified":"2007-05-31T07:16:36","modified_gmt":"2007-05-31T07:16:36","slug":"easterbrook-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/05\/31\/easterbrook-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Easterbrook in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steinn<\/a> points to that rarest of rarities, a Gregg Easterbrook column on scientific matters<\/a> (in Wired<\/cite> no less!) that isn’t completely idiotic. In this case, he takes on the misplaced priorities of NASA.<\/p>\n

Of course, this being Easterbrook, it can’t be entirely right, and I think he’s too harsh in assigning all the blame to NASA itself. For example, he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

NASA’s to-do list neglects the two things that are actually of tangible value to the taxpayers who foot its bills — research relevant to environmental policymaking and asteroid-strike protection. NASA has recently been canceling or postponing “Earth observation” missions intended to generate environmental information about our world. For instance, a year and a half ago the agency decided not to fund Hydros, a satellite that would have provided the first global data on soil moisture trends. NASA focuses its planetary research on frigid Mars rather than Venus, which suffers a runaway greenhouse effect. The agency is conducting only a few sun-study missions — even though all life depends on the sun, and knowing more about it might clarify the global-warming debate. But $6 billion a year for astronauts to take each other’s blood pressure on the space station? No problem!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Those are all true, and all highly regrettable decisions, but they’re also not NASA’s decisions. For the most part, they’re doing what they can within constraints set by the President and Congress. The top-level priorities are set higher up in the administration, and the current administration has made Mars a top priority, for whatever reason. NASA managers aren’t cutting Earth-observation projects because they’re evil bastards with misplaced priorities, they’re cutting Earth-observation programs because they haven’t been given teh funding to keep them going while also meeting their obligations to pursue the Mars mission.<\/p>\n

You could maybe try to argue that they deserve blame for not fighting the Mars thing harder, but, really, do you think that would make any difference with this administration?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steinn points to that rarest of rarities, a Gregg Easterbrook column on scientific matters (in Wired no less!) that isn’t completely idiotic. In this case, he takes on the misplaced priorities of NASA. Of course, this being Easterbrook, it can’t be entirely right, and I think he’s too harsh in assigning all the blame to… Continue reading Easterbrook in Space<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}