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Mercury, July/August 1995 Table of Contents

(c) 1995 Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Even as observatories go, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory is ornery. Getting instruments to work aboard the worlds only flying observatory, with all its vibrations and magnetic fields, is no mean feat. Bumpy flights, scheduling tussles, and engine roar make Aeroflot seem cushy. Rookies are warned not to put their soda cans on the floor, lest they freeze solid.

But the venerable Kuiper, a 91-centimeter (36-inch) telescope poking out a C-141A military cargo jet, discovered the rings of Uranus, the atmosphere of Pluto, and the water of Halley. At 12,000 meters (41,000 feet), the NASA aircraft flies high above the clouds and water vapor that hide much of the universe -- including the birthplace of stars and the center of the Galaxy -- from us on the ground.

This year, the KAO celebrated its 21st anniversary, and probably its last. It users are scrambling to get their last scraps of data; soon the crews of pilots, star trackers, computer people, navigators, mechanics, and technicians will disband. The KAOs last science flight, its 1,422nd, is scheduled for late September.

Astronomers had planned for the KAO to fly until 2000, when SOFIA, a bigger and better version, is due for take-off. But to pay for SOFIA, astronomers were told last year that they would have to give up the Kuiper. Mothballing it contributes a fifth of SOFIA's budget.

Leaving aside the question of who decided to sacrifice the KAO -- there have been grumbles that the decision was made without involving the astronomers affected -- the concern is now whether its loss will be in vain. SOFIA's funding isn't guaranteed. If it falls victim to the federal budget chaos, the era of airborne astronomy will be over.

Airborne astronomy is hardly the first program to need stable, multi-year funding. Fifty years ago, Vannevar Bush said that science could best serve society when it had "stability of funds over a period of years." Yet NASA, NSF, and other agencies still have to go through congressional reappropriation every single year. The result is monumental inefficiency. NASA's SETI project, for example, had spent $50 million on equipment before it was canceled abruptly; for all those millions, not one star was observed. The country spent $2 billion on the Superconducting Supercollider and has nothing to show for it. Man cannot live on half-baked bread alone.

When Congress haphazardly pulls the plug on half-completed programs, it makes it impossible to build up expertise, forces agencies to waste time and money redefending their budgets, and makes the U.S. government an unreliable partner in international cooperation. When the European and Japanese space agencies approve a mission, they approve the mission for its duration. More insidiously, the uncertainty cheapens the mature deliberations that should go into every commitment the government makes. When we get used to the idea that decisions don't really matter, then we won't think through those decisions carefully. We need to decide whether a project is worthwhile and whether we can complete it before we start; if not, we shouldn't even begin.

Many in Congress appreciate this. Rep. Robert Walker, chair of the House Science Committee, has pushed for a multi-year authorization for the space station, but similar measures in the past have not stopped cuts during the second stage of the budget process, appropriations. Walker's predecessor, Rep. Robert Roe, called for multi-year appropriations, but if anything Congress is moving in the other direction: unappropriating in the spring what it appropriated the previous fall.

This capriciousness is the unseen issue in the battles over the federal budget. Science must accept its fair share of the inevitable sacrifices, but without a rational budgeting system, we will never know whether the sacrifices are indeed fair.