Letter from Dr. Joe Harrington, Planetary Scientist, Cornell

Dear Elizabeth:

As one of many planetary scientists working here in Ithaca, I was very disappointed to see that you lumped space exploration in with defense weapons as negative aspects of the federal budget in your recent ICN. I should think we could all get behind learning about the origins of our planet, learning how its complex systems interact to produce the environment, learning how changes to those systems will change the environment, searching for life in extreme environments (including on Mars, Europa, Titan, and extrasolar planets), and inspiring kids to learn math and science.  NASA's Earth-observing satellites are optimized for the long-term climate studies that are crucial in the global-warming debate.  They are providing irrefutable data in volumes and accuracies undreamt of just 10 years ago.  These data are winning over both scientific and public opinion, making the nay-saying of big business and the congresspeople they own sound ever more pathetic. Senior NASA personnel are so outspoken on global warming that the Bush administration recently subjected the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NYC to routine censorship for his remarks in this area.  But, Bush can't hide the truth, whose emergence is due in large part to our investment in space exploration.

NASA explores the universe, but its mission is to bring that knowledge back and apply it to life on Earth.  For example, Jupiter's meteorology is simpler than Earth's, since Jupiter is larger and has no ground or oceans.  Studying atmospheric waves on Jupiter yields knowledge that we can apply to more-complex wave phenomena back home, such as the jet streams and El Nino.  In other words, space research makes weather prediction more accurate. Similar arguments apply for planetary geology and the behavior of planetary magnetic fields (changes in which severely affect communications and electric service).
 
Also, NASA spends quite a bit of money locally, for both research and education at all levels.  I'm sure ICN readers are aware that the Mars Rovers are operated out of our building here in Ithaca, and that every colorful Mars image you see in the national press was processed by undergraduates. Mars is just one of many projects here at Cornell, and there is an active asteroid research program at Ithaca College run by Prof. Beth Clark, whose other project is a course on energy and the environment.  The Sciencenter has a major new space exhibit for kids that was funded by NASA and in whose development NASA scientists participated.  NASA funds workshops for local science teachers that fulfill their NYS continuing education requirement.

My own NASA grants include about $13k/year that goes directly, without Cornell charging overhead, to the Southern Cayuga Central Schools observatory
and planetarium program.  Just a handful of public high schools in the US have either a planetarium or an observatory. This program puts about 1000 local kids in a planetarium each year, bussed in from the entire region between the adjoining lakes.  We also have monthly public astronomy nights and we open the observatory whenever it's clear (ICN readers are invited, see http://www.southerncayuga.org/Planetarium/Astronomyhome.htm for details).
NASA and its researchers are also very active in the national effort to improve K-12 science and math curricula.
 
The entire NASA budget is around $15B, of which more than two-thirds goes to operate the Shuttle and Space Station. These two programs do little in the way of exploration anymore, though they do teach us about long-term human habitation in space. They are maintained because the US is honoring an agreement we signed with Russia and other international partners. Space Science, NASA's unmanned program that does all of America's space exploration, is just $5B, or around 1% of what we spend on defense. This portion of NASA received an even larger hit in the President's budget than NSF and the other programs you listed, including the cancellation of several major projects for which the hardware has already been built (we are still puzzling the logic of canceling a project after the bulk of the money has been spent).  NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of what the US spends on killing people.  Space weapons, such as we have them, and surveillance satellites are entirely a project of the DoD and the military branch of DoE, and are under no reasonable concept a part of space exploration, or of NASA.

Dr. Joe Harrington