- Share This Post
- submit
- 2
-
Sparkle (0)
Last month, candidate Barack Obama issued his preK-12 education plan (PDF), in the very last paragraph of which he notes he will fund early education in part by delaying the NASA Constellation program for five years.
Excellent BlogHer post fodder, I thought--and then I went looking for women bloggers who have written about the issue. After all, education is frequently considered a "women's issue," and there's a very healthy community of women who blog about science.
Among the hundreds of posts by men on this issue, I found only a handful of posts by women, and most of those were reporting the news of Obama's proposed cut in NASA funding rather than commenting on it. Which makes me wonder: Is spaceflight not a women's issue?
It is and it isn't.
On the one hand, I'm all about women pursuing scientific careers, about women breaking down barriers to their participation in the "hard" sciences (e.g. astrophysics) and bringing fresh perspectives to programs and policy. Looked at from this angle, spaceflight is a women's issue: if we're going to send humans into space, women should not only be among the astronauts, but also among those designing the spacecraft and planning the missions. My sense is that the gender balance of scientists and engineers at NASA still skews strongly in favor of men.
On the other hand, I'm not sure women (in the U.S. or around the globe) are benefiting from the U.S. space program relative to the amount spent on the program. Yes, the NASA budget has become little more than a drop in the giant bucket of the federal government, but when we look at dollars spent--regardless of percentage of the total budget--we can see that NASA programs still attract considerable funding.
There will be those who argue that the side products of NASA research have benefited consumers tremendously, that the inventions and discoveries of NASA and its contractors have contributed significantly to Americans' quality of life through, for example, the development of better materials for constructing clothing and housing.
I suspect, however, that if that same amount of money had been put directly into improving the quality of life of women and their families globally, we'd see a much better return on our investment.
Increasingly, the discussion around spaceflight, and particularly human spaceflight, is returning to 1950s rhetoric about a "space race," this time among China, India, and the U.S. instead of just the U.S. and Russia. Historically, there has been a very strong desire among Americans to "win" this "race." In addition, this rhetoric is once again taking on Reagan-era shades of militarizing space. Competition engendered by scientific machismo and driven by sci-fi-inspired fantasies is unlikely to appeal to many women.
Others will argue that human spaceflight still is very much about expanding humanity's frontier, regardless of national affiliation, and that dreams of flight have inspired generations of young people to pursue scientific careers. Take away NASA's human spaceflight funding, some argue, and people will have less incentive to study science and engineering.
For example, Liz Rizzo writes,
Um, we need [the] space program so that kids are working towards something, something to dream about and be inspired by. Not to mention that it's important to me because, yeah, I think we're not alone, and I want to get out there. And yeah, I think space is our future. And yeah, I really, really, really think we need to be a leader in space with other countries to ensure a positive future for our citizens as our world changes.
Lisa at Welcome to My Brain opines,
Here's a bright idea, Senator: let's increase education funding by CUTTING MILATARY [sic] FUNDING. Christ on a cracker! You realize that putting a person on the moon gives kids something to dream for, to make those math and science classes worth it? Let's give them stars in their eyes, and not the vapid blonde kind. Manned spaceflight, the space station, a moon base, Mars. (And let's not neglect the less glamorous but equally important unmanned missions, the probes and robots.) Not to mention, actual hands-on experience is irreplaceable and pushing the return to the moon back even farther means that by the time you want to go, you'll have very little in the way of living resources. The guys who were around the first time will be in their upper 80s and 90s. It may seem to someone non-technical like there's no value in having the old-timers around, but that view couldn't
