The tea leaves

By Aaron on November 9, 2006 at 1:38 am | In Blog Posts |

The recent shift in the U.S. electoral landscape is likely to have many effects on astronomy. This is mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of astronomical projects are funded either directly or indirectly by public money. Directly this is mostly through NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (with some coming from the Dept. of Defense and the Dept. of Energy) and indirectly funds come through the higher education system, most of which is state funded. And these funds account for the overwhelning majority of astronomical support in the world. (Example, NASA’s FY06 budget is around US$16 Billion, the European Space Agency’s FY06 budget is around US$3.7 Billion.)

Our friend Keith Cowling at NASAWatch has a nice rundown of the expected changes in committee appointments. Another friend, Phil Plait the “Bad Astronomer”, gives a different nice rundown of what this means in the evolution/creationsim debate.

My take is that funding for NSF and NASA may not change much. The Republican former chair of the science committee, Sherwood Boehlert, actually had a reputation as a good astronomy supporter. The likely new chair of the committee, Bart Gordon, used to be the ranking minority member. In the past, they worked surprisingly well together (unlike so many other committees) so Gordon is pretty familiar with what’s going on. But Boehlert is retiring so it remains to be seen who will be the ranking minority member now. Ralph Hall is the senior minority member. He is from Texas and, naturally, is friendly to oil and energy interests, which would be worrisome if the Republicans were still in charge.

Keith mentions in his article that VSE may suffer due to increased scrutiny from congress. VSE is the “Vision for Space Exploration”, Bush’s desire to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars. It’s a mixed bag for astronomers. Increased public interest in space is always good. But NASA is gutting its science missions to pay for what amounts to largely an engineering endevour. For example, the Europa mission has been axed, despite being a much more promising place for life than Mars! (We have found life in conditions on Earth that we expect to find on Europa.)

Some cool news? Former astronaut Bill Nelson, a long-time senator from Florida, will head the Senate subcomittee on Science. Nelson flew on a shuttle in the 80’s as part of a program to put civilians in space. First they sent him along with another congressman, then the program was cancelled due to the Challenger loss.

Overall, good people will be in key positions. But with the political landscape still polarized and the government running a huge budget deficit, I don’t expect many changes.