Political Science

The lamestream media is full of this story today:

Science group backs NASA lunar plans

A panel of scientists strongly endorsed NASA’s plans to return to the moon, saying in a report Tuesday that lunar exploration will open the way toward broader studies of the Earth and solar system.

"The moon is priceless to planetary scientists,” declared the special National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists were asked to evaluate and give guidance to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s plans for robotic and human exploration of the moon over the next two decades.

President Bush two years ago vowed to return astronauts to the moon and establish an “extended presence there” in preparation for exploring Mars. He called on NASA to devote $12 billion over five years for the beginning of the program with a goal of landing on the moon between 2015 and 2020, and eventually landing on Mars.

For years I’ve been reading about planetary scientists having their funding slashed again and again, because manned space programs sucked up all the money at NASA. Time after time, real science programs that would have delivered real science at a bargain-basement price (compared with manned space programs) have been canceled, eviscerated, or “delayed” (as in “forever"). And now all of a sudden there’s a consensus amongst planetary scientists to support President Bush’s new $12B lunar boondoggle?

Not bloody likely! The National Academy of Science (and it’s mongrel offspring, the National Research Council) are, more than anything else, bureaucratic instituitions devoted to controlling the distribution of federal science funding. In other words, it’s a political animal, with anything a real scientist would recognize as “science” being very far down on their agenda. Gold dust is what gets these folks excited, not discovery, knowledge, and understanding. The panel so excitedly described above was formed for the sole purpose of providing this headline — because President Bush has almost zero support from the scientific community for his lunar and Martian windmill-tilting.

Here’s all you need to know to understand the truth of my analysis above: the majority of the panel members come from space industries. Doh! Of course they support the $12B manned space program boondoggle! Did I mention the $12B? Sure, they tossed in a journalist whose living comes from the manned space program, and a few scientists whose funding is related to the manned space program, just to give it a little credibility. If you don’t dig down more than a micron or two.

Big (as in big dollars) science is inevitably political. And all the more disgusting because of it. Hear the science pigs oink as they snuffle in their trough!