[extropy-chat] Research policy, EU versus US

[Amara Graps]

J. Andrew Rogers andrew at ceruleansystems.com :

>Both the US and Japan spend vastly more money on R&D than the entire
>EU, in any relative term you care to use (per capita, percentage of
>GDP, etc), and the gap in absolute terms enormous as well.

True

>The US regulation of research is only dangerous to the EU because the
>EU doesn't do their own.

The EU astrophysics and space science community would strongly disagree
with you (about doing their own research, that is).

The reason that some of you have not heard too much of ESA (DLR, CNES,
ASI ...) research is that their public relations department is a
fraction of  NASA's size.


>They [EU] complain about research regulation in the US,

I think that you have never worked with NASA funding and their attached
regulations and policies. I would take ESA funding over NASA funding
any day for the ease of headaches for dealing with NASA's research
restrictions. I suggest you sit in some NASA mission instrument
team meetings and listen to the complaints from the scientists when
they describe instrument building with their colleagues, software
and hardware exchanges, on-site visits, unreliable future planning,
document control, database use, for example.


Amara