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from the science-of-politics-and-politics-of-science dept.
The Planetary Society reports:
Representative John Culberson, an 8-term Texas Republican and staunch supporter of NASA and planetary exploration, lost his re-election bid to Democrat Lizzie Fletcher last week. Many factors played into this outcome, but one bears consideration by space advocates: his support for the scientific search for life at Europa was seen as a weakness and attacked accordingly.
Over the past four years, Culberson used his chairmanship of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations subcommittee to increase spending on NASA and missions to search for life on Europa. He directed hundreds of millions of dollars to this effort and played a critical role in getting the Europa Clipper mission officially adopted by NASA and the White House. And he did this without cannibalizing other NASA programs. His motivation was passion, not parochialism, as the prime benefactor of these federal dollars was California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, located far outside his Houston-area congressional district.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 19 2018, @01:44AM (7 children)
I have never heard of the bloke myself, but I am wondering what an 8-term Texas Republican has to do to lose his seat?
It can't be because of his support for a particular space project. That's just not credible.
I had a quick search, but the only thing I could find was about him skipping a MAGA rally, and how he was not a firm Trump supporter, so he may well have been made an example of by his own party.
Also, I don't really care. If the disappearance of one representative means a $multi-million, multi-year project gets cancelled, you guys are doing it wrong.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 19 2018, @02:10AM (5 children)
There's no indication that Europa Clipper will get cancelled. Maybe the optional lander portion of the mission will get cancelled.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 19 2018, @02:20AM (4 children)
That's not good though is it? I thought the lander bit was the most interesting part of the project.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 19 2018, @02:43AM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Lander_(NASA) [wikipedia.org]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/07/23/2120200 [soylentnews.org]
The lander would be nice to have, but won't be entering the internal ocean, which is what we would want from an aggressive, multi-billion dollar Europa landing mission. Can it find signs of life by drilling a few inches at the surface? Maybe, maybe not.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 19 2018, @05:56AM (2 children)
Right. To illustrate the risks of half-arsed missions.
Drilling down and founding microscopic life demonstrate what? The preexistence of that life or the contamination of the probe?
If the latter and the contaminant microbe survives/thrives, we may never know for sure if we didn't actually kill the endogenous life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 19 2018, @12:14PM (1 child)
NASA has means to decontaminate their spacecraft up to a point. If they start taking samples and find more microbes than could be expected to have come from the spacecraft, that would point to an extraterrestrial origin. But if they find fish-like organisms down there, then we're golden.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @06:55PM
Fish-like organisms? Clearly, you have not seen the movie. Tentacles, dude! Japanese got there first.
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Monday November 19 2018, @11:26AM
To be fair, the article doesn't say that he lots his seat because of him pushing for it.
What the article does say, is that it demonstrates that it was seen as a liability, because the political attack ad (shown in the article), uses his stance on science -- and this mission, to denounce him as .. well, "silly".