Government shutdown - impact on Science
The Government Shutdown is costing more than it is saving for some facilities.
The
National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been shut down interrupting several long-period surveys. You cannot simply start back up again, these surveys must be started again from scratch.
From
Science Magazine (published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science - AAAS):
Astronomer: Shutdown Could Waste a Year’s Worth of Work
More than a year’s worth of expensive data used to trace the shape of the Milky Way galaxy could become worthless as a result of today’s closure of U.S.-based radio telescopes because of the government shutdown.
“Holy cow, this is really bad,” radio astronomer Mark Reid said when informed by Science Insider that the telescopes were going offline. “If they don’t operate the telescopes, it could mean a year’s worth of data becomes useless.” And it would be a costly loss, he adds, estimating that the data cost $500,000 to collect.
Reid is a U.S. government employee who works for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like hundreds of thousands of other federal workers, he’s been at home since the shutdown began on Tuesday. Meanwhile, he’s been trying to use some of his time off productively, thinking about his collaborative work with an international team on measuring and mapping the great spiral arms of the Milky Way.
A bit more:
Reid says he’s stunned by the development. “I thought NRAO was safe” because it was not a government agency, he says. “I never even thought about this, but there’s nothing I can do about it either.”
Emily Lakdawalla writing at
The Planetary Society has a lot more as does
this compilation at Science Magazine.
It's all about political power and causing pain for We the People.
Posted by DaveH at October 5, 2013 11:37 AM