NASA Appoints New Chief Scientist

SchrodingerZ writes "Planetary Geologist Ellen Stofan, expert in the terrains of Venus, Mars, and Titan, has recently been appointed the Chief Scientist for the space agency. Stofan will act as the top adviser for Charles Bolden, NASA's current administrator. Beginning August 25th, Stofan will be Bolden's head adviser for NASA's project planning and investments. She will replace former chief scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati, who left his position to be the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. Stofan has both a masters and doctoral degree of geological sciences from Brown University, and is known for her involvement in the Applied Science Laboratory's project to put a boat on Saturn's moon Titan, as well as a member of the radar team for the Cassini spacecraft. Though she'll be joining in a time of large budget cuts, Bolden explains that '[Stofan's] breadth of experience and familiarity with the agency will allow her to hit the ground running. We're fortunate to have her on our team.'"

Comments

Re:So

[Sockatume]

Yes, NASA has a habit of hiring *competent* scientists.

*snap*

Re:In which direction?

[YttriumOxide]

NASA is almost completely irrelevant in the modern world.

While I agree that they're becoming significantly less relevant for their 'traditional' activities (which are probably better left to the fledgling private industry) as a pure science organisation, I think they still have plenty left to offer.

There's bugger all that NASA has done with it's massive budgets.

The problem is that they don't have massive budgets. They've got tiny budgets for what we expect of them, and especially in the context of budgets that are thrown at far less valuable endeavours.

Re:In which direction?

[delt0r]

They have done some great stuff with very small portions of the money. Mars rovers, Hubble and even with cost over runs JWS will be epic. NASA needs to spend less on manned space missions which are expensive for little or no return and focus on what it does well. Science.

Re:In which direction?

[Sockatume]

Bullshit.

If all you care about is firing people on ballistic trajectories around other solar system bodies, then yes, NASA has failed. If what you want is great science, something like having a network of sophisticated planetary science missions operating on all of the major solar system bodies right now, then they're kicking ass, and Stofan is the right person for the job of continuing that mission.

Re:Affirmative action

[Sockatume]

This must be a real dilemma for you, because she's a white woman replacing a non-white person. Which means more to you, your racism or your misogyny?

Re:Expert!?

[Sockatume]

More formally, your knowledge of certain aspects of the language is strictly bounded by the loss of this information. Historical linguistics as a field knows this and does research into it. I don't see that this undermines the expertise of a historical linguist any more than the uncertainty principle undermines the expertise of the theoretical physicist.

Re:keynesian science

[cusco]

Huh? Are you under the impression that exploration of frontiers is supposed to be 100 percent safe with no possibility of injury? If so, then you're 100 percent wrong. When the Gemini Seven were brought to the launch pad the first time to watch a rocket launch the thing blew up in front of them. They went on anyway. Exploring frontiers is dangerous, my great great grandparents risked starvation, cold, heat, wolves, bears, and marauding Mormon raiders to homestead the frontier. Many of their neighbors and some of their relatives died. Exploration is dangerous, and everyone involved knows it. Those of you who are frightened can stay home with your Playstation.

Re:In which direction?

[cusco]

"Massive budgets" my ass. The US military spent more just last year than NASA has spent in all the years since its founding combined. Just the Tet Offensive cost more than Apollo. Taxes generated by revenue from industries that never would have existed without NASA have more than paid for the agency over the years.

Re:politics, not science

[Sockatume]

Space exploration is the classic example of the kind of the kind of research that needs state funding: it's expensive, yet has hard-to-estimate returns that occur over an extremely long timescale.

There's a reason no private company has launched a planetary science mission, despite there being no competitive barriers to doing so.

Re:keynesian science

[cusco]

Then you have a pretty crippled definition of "explore" and "frontier". No, they're not going to the Moon or asteroids, but pretty much everything that we do in space at this point is new. They're taking baby steps now because they have to, the PTB won't designate the necessary resources, but they're learning new things every single time they send someone up. Even if what you've learned is "Hey, we can do this thing twice in a row and have it work", it's still new knowledge and may well be important down the road when we build actual colonies. If Storey Musgrave or Christine McAuliffe had wanted safe jobs they could have become accountants or programmers. Instead they became astronauts, willing to risk their lives for the advancement of knowledge and the future of humankind.

Re:In which direction?

[Gavagai80]

NASA may not, but the ESA has Venus Express sending back loads of data so there may be no need for NASA to duplicate ESA work.

Re:In which direction?

[garyebickford]

What NASA has "done lately" with regard to 'marquee' programs is cope with Washington's repeated switcheroo - Ares, Constellation, ..., every year or two Washington seems to cancel one plan and embark on another. In the corporate world, this is a classic sign of a company in trouble and about to go down the tubes, but in politics it seems to be business as usual. Further, what NASA does (not just manned space and exploration - everything) is about what women in the US spend on lipstick and other makeup, and only about 0.4% of the federal budget.

But while Washington fiddles, NASA has been a very effective promoter of both space-based research (making the ISS into a National Lab will result in advanced medical treatments and other benefits within a short time) and commercial space development, using relatively small amounts of money and creative approaches to help companies like SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace and others achieve the necessary capabilities to make commercial space development possible. Some of these companies are already profitable and the rise of "New Space" has been instrumental in reducing launch costs by as much as 1/2 for everybody. This in turn is making it economically feasible to do things like space mining and in-orbit satellite servicing and refueling. And the long term result of this will be to help cut the costs of building and launching the long-range exploration and research vehicles that NASA will need.