More Antiscience: Cancelling the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a planned infrared space observatory designed to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. It is designed to observe further than any telescope that exists today. It could potentially detect objects 100x fainter (launched over 20 years ago now) than Hubble and could see details 3x finer. The JWST will be a technological accomplishment that greatly increase our understanding of the Universe.

Congress wants to terminate the telescope because it is significantly over budget. I think a more rational approach would be to fire the current management rather than setting back astrophysics 10-20 years to save 1-2 billion a year. We've already made this mistake before, in 1994 when we canceled the SSC and set particle physics back 20 years (till the LHC came online).

Here is an article talking about the cut.

The Antiscience

I continue to hear about how there is no Antiscience sentiment in this country, but actions speak louder than words. How can we rationalize setting Astrophysics back at least a decade to save 1-2 billion dollars? Where is the sense in that? I understand it's over budget, but we are talking about the cutting edge of technology, you can't budget that perfectly, plus, if you want accountability, doesn't it make more sense to punish the management, not the science?

Two billion dollars represents 0.15% of the 1.3 trillion the U.S. will be in the red for 2011. If I said to you "We can knock off 0.15% off of the deficit next year but it will set heart attack research back 10 years", most people would say "that's crazy and we shouldn't do it". Hell, if I said "We can knock 5% off the deficit next year but it will set cancer research back a decade to twenty years", most would say "no way".

Yet almost 20 years ago we set back particle physics for 20 years to save a billion dollars, which did absolutely nothing over the long term except set back science. It did us no good for the long term because science spending isn't the problem, and everyone knows it, but politicians understand that people don't object to science cuts anymore. Now congress wants to do the same thing to Astrophysics.

I ask you, how can we say with a straight face that there is no antiscience sentiment in the U.S.? How many irrationally damaging actions against science must be taken before we admit it? Where but in a world where people have lost all respect for the sciences do these decisions make sense? How can we pretend to be outraged about our students ranking so low in math and science when we won't fund even the most important basic scientific projects? Do you think China would cancel a project like this?

What is going to happen to the U.S. if it continues to turn it's back on science?