[X] My Assistant

[Greg Hullender]

Science 1 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5829, p. 1269

News of the Week
SPACE SCIENCE:
Stern Looks for Way Out of NASA's Budget Squeeze
Andrew Lawler
His $5.4 billion budget is stretched thin, but rather than cancel space projects nearing launch or ask for more money, NASA's new science chief Alan Stern says he intends to beef up lunar science, champion smaller and less complex spacecraft, and insist on hard-nosed cost estimates before larger missions can win approval.

Full article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5829/1269a

I especially liked this line: "I don't have to kill any missions," he insists. But he said NASA will consider firing those principal investigators in charge of missions that spiral out of control.

[dvandorn]

You make some truly excellent points, Littlebit. It seems that the one area in which aerospace holds a greater appeal than other, more highly compensated and stable engineering disciplines is in its intrinsic appeal to sense of wonder. It's "cool" and "sexy" to work on spacecraft systems. For some engineers, this is enough to lure them into aerospace engineering. For others, it just doesn't outweigh the disparities in compensation and job security.

Y'all have to remember that in the late 1950s through the late 1960s, America so highly encouraged its best and brightest to specialize in aerospace engineering that we created a crop of people who were literally able to put men on the Moon. And then we thanked them, gave a few of them some medals, took most of their jobs away, and said "We don't need what you do anymore -- go find something worthwhile to do."

The engineering community hasn't forgotten the massive layoffs of the late 1960s into the early 1970s, and I can't blame them.

So -- what do we do to make aerospace engineering a well-compensated and nationally critical discipline once again? As much as people don't want to hear it, I think the first step is that more money needs to be spent on aerospace projects, and those projects need to have enough committment from the people and the government to make the discipline seem worthwhile to those who are making their career decisions today.

How do we accomplish that? I wish I knew.

-the other Doug