The Key To Science Funding? Paranoia

April 26, 2011, 10:15am

This week, a merry quartet of House Republicans served up a bill—doomed to failure/dead on arrival/just forget about it—that would call for a base on the Moon: “the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall plan to return to the Moon by 2022 and develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, in order to promote exploration, commerce, science, and United States preeminence in space as a stepping stone for the future exploration of Mars and other destinations. The budget requests and expenditures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall be consistent with achieving this goal.”

Please to note the House’s merry mob of Republicans just a couple of months ago trying to put even more of a funding hurt on NASA in the 2011 budget.

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In any case, the reason we need Moon bases is for the military, it seems. We need the, uh, high ground that is the Moon. (Though, realistically, the Moon is less the high ground than the very-far-away ground.) In any case, witness the Fear:

* Space is the world’s ultimate high ground, returning to the Moon and reinvigorating our human space flight program is a matter of national security.
* Technologies developed and sustained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s human space flight program, such as liquid and solid rocket propulsion, environmental and life support systems, and communications, navigation, and control systems are important to our military.
* China and Russia, understanding the economic and strategic importance of human space flight, have declared their intentions of colonizing the Moon and are advancing their lunar exploration plans.
* It is strategically important that the United States possess and maintain the capabilities of unfettered operation in the space domain, and not cede the space domain to other nations.

I have to confess that I don’t personally understand the Fear. What the House was targeting in its budget was specifically NASA’s climate research arm, which is focused on a very real, present danger that ultimately concerns America’s security and economic interests, like, right fucking now. I’m a bit afraid of widespread catastrophic flooding, typhoons, and, like, taking beach vacations to the Northern Territories.

And these dudes are gearing up to play Star Wars.

But wait, there’s more. SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has run out of money and is taking an extended break, citing cuts by the state of California and cuts to the National Science Foundation. Its key component, the Allen Telescope Array—named for its biggest donor Paul Allen, who should maybe step up again—went dark on April 15, future unknown.

Interesting enough, a fairly sane voice rose about the Tea Party batshit fray last month, that of Newt Gingrich, denouncing proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health and going on record saying that he would’ve tripled the budget for the National Science Foundation, ’cause that’s where the science comes from that’s the basis for all of the health tech the U.S. needs to stay competitive ultimately comes from (the ideas generated within the pure sciences, that is).

One interesting proposal made in Gingrich’s speech was taking brain research out of NIH and making it its own thing. He’d ask the researches in this new department or institution what the maximum amount of money they could reasonably spend on brain research is. And then we should give them that amount of money, and fund it all through neuroscience bonds. Which is still pretty wacky, but at least this dude is trying to make sense. Not that he isn’t totally driven by the Fear, too: more than most things, he seems to hate the idea of other countries getting medical patents/royalties and not the U.S.