Dennis Overbye writes about popular NASA programs being delayed or cut in order to fund the Moon-and-Mars initiative and support the Space Shuttle/ ISS. Predictably, people who care about actual science are somewhat dismayed-- Gordon Watts serves as a nice example.
Fellow ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney has carved himself out a nice little niche writing about the Republican War on Science, and it would be really nice to be able to lump the warping of NASA in with that. You could even make a decent case, without having to swing too far into tinfoil-hat territory-- some of the missions that are getting dumped are Earth-focussed things that deal with climate change, while others are devoted to studying extremely distant astronomical objects related to the Big Bang model that got college dropout Geroge Deutsch's knickers in a twist.
It would be nice to believe that this was all part of a conspiracy to suppress worthwhile science, because that would mean that the Bush administration actually cared about science one way or another. In some pathetic co-dependent way, that would make science more meaningful, and scientists more important.
Given their track record, though, I just don't believe it. They're fucking up NASA not because they're disturbed by the implications of quantum mechanics and modern cosmology, but because they never got the hang of Newtonian physics, specificallly the idea that actions cause reactions, and consequences that carry forward in time. As I've said before, this crowd doesn't do policy, they do politics. If saying that we'll land a man on Mars seems like it might play well, then they'll pledge to put a man on Mars, and no matter if it screws up the worthwhile projects that are already going on, because Lord knows, they're not going to commit any actual resources to some half-assed political initiative.
(The official White House reaction to scientific complaints about this sort of thing always seems to be mild surprise that anybody took them seriously enough to start re-arranging budget priorities-- it was just something the President said in a speech, after all. Nobody else pays any attention to those-- why can't these eggheads get with the program?)
I'd love to believe that there was a sinister conspiracy here, but I just can't. Their treatment of NASA is all of a piece with their treatment of port security, disaster preparedness, war planning, government finance, and on, and on, and on...
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I generally agree with you on the politics-rather-than policy, but Bush actually issued a National Security Presidential Directive (#31) in Jan 2004, which is the source of most or all of the turmoil at NASA.
The content of NSPD-31 has not been published, but bits of it have been cited as part of NASA's "why are we doing this" preamble in public documents.
I blame the Libertarians in Space (probably the California subspecies (Hi fellas!)). What has been published on space policy in GWB times suggests that some of the mid-level staffers in the VP and NSC are space cadets.
But even the Libertarians in Space can't stand the Shuttle. They perhaps especially can't stand the Shuttle. (The more extreme ones don't like government space programs at all, but I get the impression that there are divisions.)
I think Chad's got it; they just don't care.
Or don't have a clue.
The essence of the accelerated CEV schedule is to get rid of the Shuttle as fast as possible, and putting CEV development in the science line and requiring it to be developed rapidly is what is primarily killing the science missions. (JWST overruns hurt, so does paying for HST refurbishment repeatedly, without it actually happening).
I actually agree with getting rid of STS ASAP, but if you want to mandate such things you have to pay for them. CEV development needs to be a separately authorized and appropriated line and the exec needs to go to Congress and put some pressure to get the funds for it that they think they'll need.
Overall they don't care, but this particular turnaround is triggered by someone caring who was in place to give a push without followthrough. Bit like the turnaround in DoE science funding for the particle physicists - one person saying something at the right time and place, not a coherent policy that everyone cares about.
YMMV
Just FYI, this post has a broken HTML tag in it somewhere, and nothing after it is feeding, and this one looks like:
Thu, Mar. 2nd, 2006, 09:48 pm
[i]uncertprin_sb: FEMA in Space
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]
as its LJ entry. I don't know if this is messing up other RSS feeds or not.
Jamie, the broken tag was fixed this morning, but I don't know what kind of delay LJ has for reading feeds.
I'm inclined to agree with you here. I have never lumped in NASA with my argument (except for with respect to the James Hansen case).