WASHINGTON (States News Service) University science programs may be the first to be cut when Congress deliberates the NASA budget in the VA-HUD spending bill this week, according to a group of academic space scientists. The Space Science Working Group (SSWG) is worried about a line-item that contains grants benefiting universities all over the country.
"The grants are usually the first to be hit because they start over every year," said Don Lamb, the groups chairman and a professor at the University of Chicago.
Maintaining funding for space science is often an uphill battle. Space scientists in academia compete with aerospace and satellite companies with deep pockets for lawmakers ears. To help even the playing field, SSWG teams up space scientists from 18 top research universities around the country including Harvard and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology with government relations specialists to nudge Congress to tailor the NASA budget in its favor
"Until this group came along, they were never hearing in any organized way from the science community," said Josh Grindlay, who chaired the group from 1990 to 1992. "It has had quite a bit of an effect."
Lamb said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) has been particularly welcoming to the group, and wants to restore all of NASAs funding for its Office of Space Science.
In the 1980s, when NASA shifted its focus and dollars to the shuttle program, scientists at the University of Chicago and Washington University formed the SSWG, which became part of the Association of American Universities by the end of the decade.
The groups 18-member steering committee two-thirds of which are scientists, the rest government relations experts represents hundreds of universities with space, earth and life science faculty. It works alongside other advocacy groups for space, such as the American Astronomical and American Physical societies, whose memberships are in the thousands.
The SSWG meets once a year in Washington after the president releases his NASA budget to go over provisions, to draft a position paper highlighting areas it cares about, and to blanket Capitol Hill with copies.
In recent years, the group has received less exposure on Capitol Hill. House and Senate committees once invited the groups chairperson to testify about the percentage of the NASA budget going to science, Grindlay said, but not any more.
"It used to be that these committees really wanted to hear from us," Grindlay said. "We were there to educate rather than lobby, to explain to them what this stuff was all about."
The GOP-led 106th Congress has been aloof to other groups in addition to the SSWG, Grindlay said. Several other groups with vested interests in NASAs budget including leading aerospace companies and even NASA officials no longer testify.
"The amount of time they set aside for these open sessions has been greatly reduced," he said. "The Lockheed types arent in there either."
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