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The Place of NASA & the National Science Foundation in the Overall Science Enterprise 3 Mar 2009
The House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science held a hearing entitled “The Place of NASA and the National Science Foundation in the Overall Science Enterprise” on 3 March 2009. Testifying before the subcommittee were two witnesses: Dr. Lennard Fisk, former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications, and Dr. Samuel M. Rankin, III, Associate Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society.
Dr. Fisk began by stating that NASA has been repeatedly overlooked in the past few years. He cited the fact that the recent Rising Above the Gathering Storm report “was effectively silent on NASA” and the America Competes Act “did not focus on NASA science.” Furthermore, the stimulus package only allotted a substantial amount of funding to Earth science at NASA. In response to these actions, Dr. Fisk stressed the importance of NASA space funding, stating that “space has become part of the underlying infrastructure of our civilization” and “our activities in space have a profound impact on our image as a nation, and provide extraordinary opportunities for us to be strategic leaders in a world that is increasingly judging space to be important.” Dr. Fisk pointed to the technologies, the inspiration fostered in younger generations, and the economic growth that are all derived from space research. Finally, he correlated space with climate change by testifying that it will take observations from space to understand how the Earth works and what mankind’s impact is on the planet, affirming that “generations to come will not be kind to us that we treated the future sustainability of the planet in so cavalier a fashion” as we are doing now.
Speaking for the National Science Foundation (NSF) was Dr. Rankin, who began by stating that NSF’s annual budget signifies about four percent of the total federal budget, yet it amounts to nearly half of all funding for non-medical research at colleges and universities. Of that, 40 percent of funding for the physical sciences comes from NSF. Furthermore, Dr. Rankin reminded the committee that “society, unaware for the most part of how basic research impacts daily life, enjoys many benefits from NSF investments,” including Google, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and geographic information systems.
In conclusion, both Drs. Fisk and Rankin stressed the importance of science funding as its results not only reaffirm America’s position as an economic and global leader, but the outcomes of federally funded science research are responsible for many of the technologies we use in everyday life as well as benefiting mankind in general.