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Eighty years ago, presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush delivered to President Harry S. Truman a remarkable report entitled “Science-The Endless Frontier.” In this report, Bush described the immense benefits of government support for academic science that could then, in turn, provide ever-expanding knowledge to benefit industrial, national security, and societal interests of the United States. This report led directly to the formation of the National Science Foundation and has been a model for the tight interplay of university-based research with societal needs over the past eight decades. It has led to a science and engineering enterprise in the U.S. that is the envy of the rest of the world. The list of positive results of government investment is — as the Bush report suggests — endless.
With recent changes in administrations in Washington, the White House and the Office of Management and Budget have proposed massive reductions in federal support for science and engineering in almost all discipline areas. These proposed cuts in funding would have devastating impacts on a science-support system that has provided amazing results in virtually all STEM areas. Reflecting on my own career in space science, I feel it is inadvisable to tamper with something that has worked so well.
Like many growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I was mesmerized by science reports about astronomy, medicine, chemistry and all the other technical disciplines. I remember standing in our neighbor’s kitchen at age 10 and being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a space physicist. I am sure few of the adults at that birthday party knew any more than I really did about what that job entailed, but I was proud of my youthful determination. I could, I suppose, have had a successful — and relatively comfortable — life joining my family members in the construction business. But even very early on, science called unrelentingly to me.
I would say that there was prescience in my 10-year-old’s remark. Upon doing well in a sophomore modern physics course, I was invited to join Professor James Van Allen’s space research group. Van Allen had discovered the Earth’s radiation belts — arguably the first great discovery of the Space Age. Working with Van Allen, even as an undergraduate, I was encouraged to design, build and test an instrument subsystem that flew to Jupiter on the first NASA exploratory mission to the outer solar system — opportunities that, with proposed budget cuts, may not be offered to future science students.
Following my early career with Van Allen, I had the privilege of then working with Edward Stone at Caltech, who was best known for his role as project scientist for over 50 years of the Voyager missions to the outer planets. It is hard for me to imagine having a better launching into a science career than from these two giants of experimental physics. Both of them carried out programs that brought great honor and prestige to the U.S.
After Caltech, I was again quite privileged to step into a leadership role at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico at an early age. As one of the younger group leaders at the Los Alamos Lab, I was handed the management role for an amazing team of quite senior solar and magnetospheric scientists. In this leadership role, I learned the lifelong lesson that one could do amazing basic research but also in the process make equally important contributions to the needs of society. This “dual-use” philosophy is one that pervades modern space physics research and over time in solar-terrestrial research it has become known in today’s parlance as “space weather.”
After Los Alamos, several years as a Laboratory Chief at NASA drove home to me that space, especially solar science, magnetospheric research and planetary exploration are themes that interest and excite young and old people alike. Who wouldn’t want to know more about the (arguably) most important star in the universe, our Sun? Who wouldn’t wonder about what it is like on neighboring planets like Mars, or Mercury, or Jupiter? Who (among those lucky enough to see them) hasn’t wondered at an aurora dancing above one’s head on a moonless night?
For the last three decades it has been my great privilege to lead one of the most prominent academic space research institutes in the nation. The institute — the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado — has achieved remarkable things over its years since being founded in 1948. Over the Lab’s lifetime, there has always been the bedrock motivation to understand the space environment to advance prediction and successful forecasting of severe space weather.
Given these historical touchpoints, it has been bewildering as to why the current presidential administration has proposed to slash federal support for space research and space applications by more than a factor of two. By any objective measure, the U.S. space program — human and robotic — has done nothing but bring honor and distinction to America. The successes of U.S. space missions have been the envy of the rest of the world and the dazzling space successes continue to inspire young people in the U.S. and around the world.
What have we in the ranks of science and engineering done to cause national leaders and policy makers to want to destroy our academic-government-industry partnership that has brought such distinction and admiration from the rest of the world? Why would we ever want to dismantle a system that has made our nation safer, more secure and more productive than might ever have been foreseen at the dawn of the Space Age nearly 70 years ago?
If we are going to change the system of science support in this nation, we should do so with extreme care and forethought. We should seek to understand deeply how altering the academic-government-industry partnership may have catastrophic consequences. We should certainly make changes only when a viable and highly functional alternative is available and is demonstrated to be more efficacious than what has served so well for over three-quarters of a century. Ours should not be the generation that puts an end to the “Endless Frontier.”
Dr. Daniel Baker is Distinguished Professor of planetary and space physics at University of Colorado, Boulder, and has just been named Director of the new Colorado Space Policy Center.
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