At NASA, Clouds Are What You Zoom Through to Get to Mars
by Cornelia Dean
New York Times, March 21, 2005


Until a few weeks ago, James C. Wilson, a professor of engineering at the
University of Denver, thought he would be spending the summer using
high-altitude NASA aircraft to carry instruments into tropical clouds to
measure the movement of water vapor and particles like soot.

Understanding these clouds is critical to understanding and predicting
climate change.  But the project has been canceled, Dr. Wilson says, a
casualty of accounting changes at the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and of the Bush administration's emphasis on sending people
to the Moon and Mars.

While NASA is best known for its spaceflight programs, it has long
financed other scientific research, including the study of the atmosphere
and of components of the universe. Until this year, that research was
largely shielded from cost overruns in the shuttle and space station
programs

But under procedures instituted during the tenure of Sean O'Keefe, the
administrator who left the agency in February, officials are much more
free to shift money to the shuttle and the space station from other
programs. Even though NASA would get a 2.4 percent increase in financing
under the Bush administration's budget for the coming fiscal year, many
scientific programs could suffer.

"Those firewalls are coming down, and that's a cause for concern," said
Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is chairman
of the House Committee on Science, which held a hearing on NASA spending
last month.

Also, in the fiscal year that began last October, the agency adopted
"full-cost accounting," a system under which the costs for NASA personnel
and facilities, which once appeared separately in the agency's budget, are
ascribed to the programs that use them. "The idea is, that will more
accurately reflect the true costs of the programs," said Sarah Keegan, a
spokeswoman for NASA.

But the agency does not always shift money along with this new budget
responsibility.  As a result, managers facing new costs without new money
are delaying, shortening or even eliminating some of their programs. This
was the problem that doomed the summer cloud study, Dr. Wilson said.

Also, the new focus on sending people to the Moon and Mars "in some cases
means a reconfiguration of priorities," Ms. Keegan said.

In an editorial in the current issue of the journal Science, its editor,
Donald Kennedy, called the mood among NASA scientists "an odd combination
of confusion, gloom and struggle." He added in an interview, "Something
major is happening with a redistribution of NASA's resources away from
science."

Dr. Kennedy says that the plan to send people to the Moon and Mars "may
not be a worthless boondoggle" but that some researchers are calling it
the scientific equivalent of "extreme sports."

Other scientists said that in focusing on human spaceflight, the
administration was ignoring the collaborative process in which scientists
inside and outside NASA work together, through the National Research
Council, to establish priorities for the agency.  The priorities are
typically reviewed every 10 years, in what are called decadal reports.

"They are doing it totally from the top down," said Robert P. Kirshner, a
professor of astronomy at Harvard and the president of the American
Astronomical Society. He said the impetus for the Moon-Mars program came
"from the president, the political people,"  and added, "That doesn't make
it evil, but that's not where the community of scientists saw the
opportunity."

For example, Dr. Kirshner said, the last 10-year report by
astrophysicists, in 2002, assumed that shuttle astronauts would be sent to
the Hubble Space Telescope to replace batteries and gyroscopes and to add
new instruments, two of which are being built.

But under the full-cost accounting system, Dr. Kirshner said, the Hubble
budget would have to bear the full cost of the mission, estimated at a
billion dollars or more, which is about a fifth of all NASA science
spending that is not related to the shuttle or the space station.

"What's funny about it is they don't charge shuttle trips to the space
station in the new way," Dr. Kirshner said. "And I would say the space
station has very few uses we could think of and has produced almost
nothing for physical science."

The Hubble telescope is widely regarded as a scientific triumph, but it
will die in orbit in a few years unless it is refurbished.

Dr. Wilson said the cancellation of the cloud project was troubling not
just because it left some associates out of work or contemplating unpaid
summer vacations but also because "it deprives us of access to the high
clouds."

Only NASA has U-2 planes and other aircraft capable of carrying
instruments high enough to observe tropical clouds, which rise to unusual
altitudes. Without its participation, the research, and a related project
planned for next winter, will not go forward.

"I don't want to whine about NASA, because they allowed me to live my
dream, which was to do interesting science on things I think are
important," Dr. Wilson said in an interview. "And I cannot complain about
a proposal being turned down; it happens all the time."

But in 25 years of watching NASA research efforts, he said in an e-mail
message, "I have never seen an announced mission canceled."

Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, a nonprofit
organization for scientists researching geology, astronomy and
astrophysics, said planetary scientists completed a 10-year study in 2002
and listed exploration of the Moon as a priority, "but only robotic
exploration."

Dr. Sykes described himself as "a big fan of human space exploration" who
was inspired to become a planetary scientist by the Mercury astronauts of
the early 1960's. But, he said, "For a lot of science it's really more
cost-effective to do things robotically."

Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator for the science mission
directorate, rejected the idea that scientific merit, as determined in the
decadal report system, had fallen by the wayside in the new environment at
NASA.

"Science has been, is and will continue to be a major component of NASA's
program,"  Dr. Asrar said. "NASA depends on the scientists from across the
nation to help set its priorities and achieve those goals and objectives
and priorities."

He added, though, that the agency did not look to scientists "to pass
judgment on the composition of the NASA program." When it comes to issues
like an exploration program for the Moon, he said, "that is a decision
that is made by the executive branch and the legislative branch of our
government."

Although the administration has not abandoned other efforts, its focus is
on human exploration of the Moon and Mars, Frederick D. Gregory, deputy
administrator of NASA, told the House Science Committee in testimony last
month. For example, he said, robots may be sent again to Mars, but they
would go "in anticipation of eventual human visits."

David Goldston, chief of staff of the House Science Committee, agreed that
NASA was setting its priorities in accord with President Bush's Moon-Mars
program. "One reason to be concerned about priority-setting is, what will
happen if the exploration programs start having cost overruns?" he said.

Representative Boehlert applauded the president's plan and endorsed the
idea of altering accounting to better reflect the true cost of NASA
programs. He said recent changes had inspired an agency "that in effect
was in a collective funk."

But Mr. Boehlert said it was important not to lose sight of earth science,
aeronautics and other missions, and he added that he hoped these and other
issues could be debated as Congress worked on the budget for next year.

The idea of sending people to explore the Moon and Mars is "a major goal,"
Mr. Boehlert said, but "we are very concerned about the impact on earth
science."

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