Letter: We should not punish U.S. space program for its successes

From MLive: Letter: We should not punish U.S. space program for its successes
"Where's Spring Arbor?" a stranger will ask me. I'll reply, "It's a friendly small town with a big church in southern Michigan," and I might add it's in Jackson County. As a native Spring Arborite, I'm accustomed to community.

As I write this, I find myself in a the very different community of planetary scientists gathered at the weeklong 43rd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. "Exhaustingly thrilling" summarizes my feelings of attending talks and rubbing shoulders with high-ranking NASA officials and high-powered scientists who control spacecraft scattered over tens of millions of miles in the solar system. I'm still a peon with my hot-off-the-press master's degree in the geology of Mars from Temple University in Philadelphia, though I'm about to start a Ph.D on the same topic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The atmosphere here this year is rather tense as President Obama's budget for NASA for next year contains a 20 percent cut to planetary science in general and Mars exploration in particular, even though NASA's budget is about flat from last year. The proposed 20 percent cut represents about $300 million, but it's so strange that it's targeted at planetary science, which is the most productive and successful of all NASA's programs in light of discoveries such as water currently flowing on Mars, colder-than-the-Upper-Peninsula lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan, and the launch of spacecraft like the new Mars rover Curiosity (landing Aug. 6) and the new Jupiter orbiter Juno. Are we being punished for our success?

Michigan's economic ties to the space program are only slight, but we native Michiganders have more to gain than jobs. In fact, all citizens of Earth have intellectual, artistic, and even spiritual wealth to gain from a robust program of affordable space exploration, even in this austere budgetary climate. Doing or not doing exciting science isn't like flipping a light switch: It takes years to build up intellectual and technological capability, often in the form of investing in graduate students such as myself. Losing such capability, unfortunately, can be a much more speedy processes.

Candidly, I hope this will inspire some of you to write or visit Rep. Tim Walberg as well as senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, regardless of your political party. You can visit with Walberg's staff at 800 W. Ganson St. in Jackson; Levin's staff at 124 W Allegan St # 1810, Lansing; and Stabenow's staff at 221 W Lake Lansing Road #100, East Lansing.

The message to deliver? Fund the 2013 planetary science budget at 2012 levels! Learn more at planetary.org.