…and then there is cutting money off from a good investment.
Can we really trust that this particular cut is wise, given both the previous success and the (relatively) low cost of seeing it through to conclusion?
In a cost-cutting move prompted by President Bush’s moon-Mars initiative, NASA could summarily put an end to Voyager, the legendary 28-year mission that has sent a spacecraft farther from Earth than any object ever made by humans.
The probable October shutdown of a program that currently costs $4.2 million a year has caused consternation among scientists who have shepherded the twin Voyager probes on flybys of four planets and an epic journey to the frontier of interstellar space.
“There are no other plans to reach the edge of the solar system,” said Stamatios Krimigis, a lead investigator for the project since before its launch in 1977. “Now we’re getting all this new information, and here comes NASA saying, ‘We want to pull the plug.’ “
NASA officials said the possibility of cutting Voyager and several other long-running missions in the Earth-Sun Exploration Division arose in February, when the Bush administration proposed slashing the division’s 2006 budget by nearly one-third — from $75 million to $53 million.
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Dick Fisher, NASA’s deputy director for the Earth-sun division, acknowledged that Voyager’s looming demise is a direct result of the new budget. He said the agency based its proposed cuts on a “senior review” by outside experts who in 2003 gave Voyager a low priority among the division’s 13 “extended” missions.
“If we use that set of goals, we would be looking at certain missions that would have to be terminated,” Fisher said in a telephone interview. “We have to [decide] whether to sweat the rest of the budget to pay for this.”
An extended mission begins when a spacecraft has finished its original task but is still able to contribute new science. The best known one underway is that of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are exploring the Martian desert a year after the end of their 90-day “design” mission.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, destined originally for a five-year journey to Jupiter and Saturn, have been extended repeatedly ever since. Most systems are functioning well, and both spacecraft are expected to provide usable data until their plutonium power sources are used up — probably in 2020.
For some perspective, reflect on the original argument for the missions:
“I think it was the science adviser at the time, and the NASA administrator, who went to visit [then-President Richard] Nixon,” Krimigis said, noting that Nixon was lukewarm on the mission. “They told him that the opportunity only arose once every 175 years — ‘and Jefferson missed it.’ ” Nixon signed on.
Think about it for a while.
Cut off money for a mission that will not be repeated in our lifetime, nor the lifetime of any of our children currently alive, or pay the comparatively small amount to see it through to the end.
Are we willing to pay to “boldy go where no one has gone before”?
I hope we are.