[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

[Amara Graps]

Emlyn:
>What I object to in the conservatives is that I see them as primarily
>responsible for what I think of as a continuing political/social lack
>of confidence on the part of the people of the country, which I would
>now call a world wide depression. It leads to support for these
>policies of warring overseas, closing the borders, viewing foreigners
>and each other with suspicion, and a generally bleak view of the state
>of the world. Blanket pessimism. It's the opposite to what I'd like to
>see as an extropian, because extropianism *requires* optimism.

(I agree)

>From what you wrote above,  let's consider one aspect of human 
optimistic endevour: NASA, which was put under the Department
of Homeland Security in recent years.

It's hard to make scientific work in such a environment. In general, my
colleagues on this side of the Atlantic work together "as usual", the
scientists I know work with each other fairly well. The only blockage
I've seen and experienced is not political (at least not more than the
usual), but is the low funds from their respective space agencies (ESA,
ASI, DLR, CNES for example). So, therefore, when we work with each
other, and exchange information, we don't need people in the corner
checking documents to delete anything that is not compliant with ITAR
(International Trade Regulations, i.e. US Defense Department). On the
other hand, with NASA, there always is such a person or persons, and
this is just a small example of what working with NASA entails.
Documents, visits and face-to-face meetings at NASA centers and their
contractors are full of rules, checks, prohibitions, massive delays,
cancellations, suspicion, suspicion. Our NASA colleagues, and the US
scientists elsewhere who work with them, are very tired of it all, but
this is the new way under Department of Homeland Security, and they do
their best to follow the new rules handed down from above. I've heard
serious words in the last few years of people planning to jump ship and
more serious words in the last few days. NASA was always bloated, slow,
with a massive bureaucracy, but you could always count on the enthusiasm
of the scientists to circumvent the small annoyances and do great
things. I don't sense that enthusiasm very much now.

In the last year, everyone watched the new focus at NASA under the
direction of the Bush Administration to be "Moon and Mars," (NASA's
"Vision of Exploration"... err, rename and, in practice, implement
something different). What does not fit this niche is put on hold or
cancelled. Think about the cosmologists. The acceleration of the
expansion of the Universe is the biggest thing to discover in cosmology
in many decades, and the cosmologists' funds are reduced or dropped. For
space scientists, there is no longer a firewall between human space
flight and space scientists, so the cost overruns from the ISS and the
shuttle are experienced by the space researchers. No longer is it clear
what scientific purposes are acceptable under the new "Vision." The
Hubble servicing mission is affected by the reallocation of funds too.
Do you think that NASA space science and astrophysics research can
survive under another four years of the Bush Administration? Some don't
think that it can.

Amara


P.S. I don't think I'm living in an insulated environment, I cross
different groups of people, cultures, my close friends and family in the
US, friends and colleagues scattered in the rest of the world, including
in the (Middle) East. I ask a lot of questions, and I listen and observe
alot with my own ears and eyes, going  to the different places, when I
can. My own political situation is exposed to the world governemnts: the
Italian government put me through the same political procedure
(fingerprinting, handprinting, palmprinting in addtion to the other
papers, medical checks and so on) that they put citizens of dozens of
other countries. When I complained of this to an Italian man I know who
works at the European Space Agency headquarters, he said: "have you
heard the expression tit-for-tat? Foreigners are routinely treated in the worst
suspicious way by the US governement, so don't be surprised if other
governments do the same to US citizens in response." I have no idea of
it is true in Italy's case. I know I do experience a fair amount in my
daily life of the effects of the Bush administration on the rest of the
world.
-- 
Amara Graps, PhD     www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), 
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR, 
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it