Astronomers are howling over the fact that the
government has announced that it will not be funding an infrared
space telescope called WFIRST, which stands for Wide-Field Infrared
Survey Telescope. Engaging in some pretty ridiculous hyperbole,
cosmologist Ethan Siegel tells us that “canceling WFIRST will
permanently ruin NASA.”
Based on how loud they are howling, you would think that
the cancellation of the WFIRST telescope means that there will be no
more government-funded telescopes for astronomers to make use of.
But that is not true. In 2019 the government will deliver a gigantic
gift to our astronomers: the James Webb Space Telescope. It will
have a price tag of about 10 billion dollars.
Astronomers weeping about the cancellation of WFIRST are
therefore like the daughter in the conversation below:
Daughter: You mean I'm not getting a Mercedes on
my seventeenth birthday? You're so cruel!
Mother: But sweetie, next year it will be your
sixteenth birthday, and on that birthday I will give you a shiny red
Ferrari sports car.
Daughter: But I want the Ferrari and the
Mercedes!
Part of the reason a telescope like the Hubble telescope
was worthwhile is that it produced so many images showing what
objects in distant space look like. But an infrared telescope won't
show what distant objects in space look like. Such a telescope will
show the infrared radiation from such an object. So the photos from
WFIRST would look like those weird images that ghost hunters get when
they photograph things with an infrared camera. Such a telescope is
intrinsically less valuable than a project like the Hubble telescope
and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Infrared image of the Andromeda galaxy
Is there some lack of data for astronomers to analyze?
Certainly not. Scientists in fields such as astronomy are already
flooded with far too much data for them to ever fully analyze. Once
the James Webb Space Telescope launches next year, astronomers will
be double-drowning in data. Do they really need an additional space
telescope so that they can be triple-drowning in data?
When I look at some of the statements astronomers have
made protesting the cancellation of WFIRST, I see some pretty thin
reasoning. Some of the astronomers are pointing out the WFIRST was
on the “decadal survey” list of recommended projects. They're
reasoning: “you can't cancel something on our decadal survey list!”
But what is the decadal survey list? It's just a wish list. Putting an
item on your wish list does not mean that someone else is obligated to
give you that thing. A daughter or son is not entitled to receive
all the things they list on their Christmas list.
Let us consider the average amount of money that an
astronomer gets from the government, in money spent on space
telescopes and grants. There are only about 10,000 professional
astronomers in the United States. If you consider only the cost of
the James Webb Space Telescope, and divide its cost over ten years,
you get funding of about a billion dollars per year. That amounts to
about $100,000 per astronomer per year.
It's hard to imagine how anyone blessed by such largess
could complain. By comparison, the average Joe is lucky to get $5000
or $10000 in benefits from the government, from programs such as the
SNAP program (“Food Stamps”) or Medicaid.
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