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Projects: S.O.S: Save Our Science!Restoring the VisionStatement to the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related AgenciesApril 24, 2007 NASA is a great agency achieving great things. NASA brings out the best in us, a society using some of its great wealth to help people around the globe understand our place in the Universe and to inspire generations of explorers. NASA's images, its heroes, along with its scientific and engineering achievements, have changed the world for all humankind. This testimony criticizing both the proposed NASA budget and current NASA operating plan is in support of space exploration and the process of scientific discoveries and engineering achievements which NASA represents to the world. The Vision for Space Exploration -- which is supposed to be guiding NASA’s program and budget -- has become distorted. Its mantra, “go as you pay,” has become “go as you cannibalize other programs.” Its scientific underpinnings have been removed, leaving it suspended with uncertain public support and public interest. My statement today, on behalf of The Planetary Society, is designed to represent that public interest. The Society is the largest public space-interest group in the world, a non-governmental organization that represents no particular profession, but instead represents the interest of citizens who believe in the value of space exploration to the nation and to the world. The original Vision for Space Exploration’s first goal was “a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond.” Instead, the robotic program has been undercut and the solar system is nearly unmentioned in the human program. The original Vision for Space Exploration was to “Undertake lunar exploration activities to enable sustained human and robotic exploration of Mars and more distant destinations in the solar system.” Instead, Mars robotic exploration in the next decade has been almost eliminated, and lunar exploration activities have been diverted to constructing a permanent lunar base with macro-engineering projects in place of exploration objectives. The original Vision for Space Exploration directed NASA to “Conduct robotic exploration of Mars to search for evidence of life, to understand the history of the solar system, and to prepare for future human exploration; Conduct robotic exploration across the solar system for scientific purposes and to support human exploration. In particular, explore Jupiter’s moons, asteroids and other bodies to search for evidence of life, to understand the history of the solar system, and to search for resources; and Conduct advanced telescope searches for Earth-like planets and habitable environments around other stars” Instead, Mars exploration has been cut, the mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa and the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission have been eliminated, and the search for extraterrestrial life has been cut in half. Instead of “for scientific purposes” the program has seen $3 billion eliminated from four years of space science planning, and science research and data analysis -- the “seed corn” that allows NASA to reap future benefits from its exploration programs -- was cut 15% across the board. These contradictions between the conduct of the NASA program and the originally stated Vision for Space Exploration explain why The Planetary Society supports the Vision but opposes its current implementation plan. The word “exploration” has been hijacked and is now used to mean human space vehicle development, instead of missions and discoveries in the solar system. Not only do we still support the Vision, we also support the NASA Administrator in his incredibly difficult effort to, at long last, redirect human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit. Mike Griffin is not against science, but he has been given too few resources and too many constraints to properly administer either the Vision or space science and exploration. NASA cannot juggle limited resources and overburdening constraints without dropping a few balls. NASA's budget should be increased as was originally envisioned to restore the Vision’s scientific underpinnings and to prepare for human exploration of the solar system. If such a realistic budget increase is impossible, then the Vision’s timetable should be stretched. In fact originally the Vision was said to have no timetable. Most of the current dislocations in the Vision’s Constellation program are being driven by arbitrary dates having only political objectives. There is no national security or economic driver that requires its current timetable. “Save Our Science” has become a rallying cry for The Planetary Society – we submitted thousands of petitions to Congress last year, and thousands more to the President this year, from citizens asking to restore the science funding that was cut from the NASA plan. Intellectually, science and exploration are inextricably linked, but bureaucratically the “firewall” that once helped protect science needs to be restored. We fully recognize that space science is not an entitlement program and that it can proceed at a slower pace. Our call to restore the scientific underpinnings to the Vision and to NASA’s budget is not a statement of special interest for scientists. Too often, NASA is forced to make decisions in order to bolster one or another part of its work force because of some special interest. Our call is dominated by the public interest and by public support for the great ventures of space exploration – the ventures that for the past decade brought such extraordinary credit and support for NASA in the U.S. and around the world. Consider just three examples: the remarkable, continuing three-year odyssey of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars; the complementary discoveries about water being made from spacecraft in orbit around Mars; and the thrilling international Cassini/Huygens mission in the Saturn system. The fantastic discoveries from these explorations – the watery history of Mars and the possibility of liquid water on its surface today; water geysers in the Saturnian system; and hydrocarbon lakes on Titan, to name a few – are only part of the rewards that the U.S. has accrued. The adventures of roving on Mars, probing Titan, and voyages through the solar system have enthralled the public, motivated a generation of students and their teachers, and have advanced American technology. And, of course, we should mention the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager probes. Their decades-long explorations have inspired generations of students to strive for excellence, and yet NASA was ready to abandon them both just a few years ago. The FY 2007 budget damaged the future of NASA. Science missions were delayed or canceled; technology funding was slashed, as was research funding—astrobiology, in particular. The slash in research and technology funding put at risk the ability to develop future missions and to adequately analyze data from existing ones; it will drive many young people from the field, thereby mortgaging the future of NASA science and exploration. This Committee recognized these problems last year, and the work that you were doing on the FY 2007 budget would have partially rectified these problems. The Senate was also working to correct the situation. But all that work was lost when no budget was passed last year. We urgently ask you to pick up where you left off and to restore some of the losses in NASA science, technology, and flight missions. We urge you again to support the new start for a mission to explore Europa. There is one additional thing that you could do to help open the box in which NASA has been placed – the box defined by too much politics and not enough resources. That is international cooperation. Four nations, besides the U.S., are planning lunar missions: Japan and China this year, India next year, Russia soon afterwards. In fact, these countries are not just sending single lunar missions, but each has a lunar program with orbiters to be followed by landers and rovers. Europe is also planning lunar missions as part of its Aurora exploration program. For the U.S. to plan a lunar base completely independent of these missions is not just wasteful, it lacks rationale. It lacks vision. The Planetary Society has called for an International Lunar Decade in which the spacefaring nations of the world can cooperate to advance their exploration objectives, and in which the developing world can share in the benefits of space science and exploration. The U.S. could return to its original Vision for Space Exploration, looking forward to Mars. We have already landed humans on the Moon. We can work with other nations as they now reach for the Moon, and in that way, build a rationale that serves more than just a space program, but global cooperation as well. This statement has focused on exploration, the goal enunciated in the Vision for Space Exploration to extend human presence into the solar system. More specifically, we have focused on the planets. That isn’t too surprising – we are after all, The Planetary Society. However, we were founded on the premise that one of the chief goals of planetary exploration is to learn about ourselves, and about our own planet. The very first observations and models of global climate change came from planetary missions to Venus, and then later, to Mars. The most basic scientific work of our co-founders Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray was about comparative planetology, studying other worlds to understand the processes at work on our own planet. Never in our history has understanding the Earth been so important. Congress should, along with addressing all other science concerns, restore the programs and missions in NASA to observe the Earth. This past year, NASA dropped “understanding the Earth” from its mission statement. The Planetary Society picked it up, and added it to our own mission statement. But we cannot pick up the budget for the planetary and Earth science that has been cut from the NASA budget. Congress must do that. We urge Congress to help NASA achieve the goals articulated in the Vision for Space Exploration, for the benefit of our future, and our children’s' future. Save Our Science. BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
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