JWST and the AAS
The Plan for the AAS
- A new JWST Backdrop
- A 50” 3D TV
- A 42” plasma TV
- “Pieces” of JWST at booth
- Take home informational material
- Brochures
- Education material
- Science media guide
- Link to social media and websites
- Take home items to increase “word of mouth”
Dec 16th, 2010
TIPS Meeting
JWST Community and Public Outreach
JWST Exposure is Growing!
Dec 16th, 2010
TIPS Meeting
The Super Conducting Super Collider
- courtesy Robert Smith
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To rising cost estimates; there was a widespread and corrosive perception
that the initial cost had been a crude buy-in. I think it was approved at around
$4.4 Billion and within months extra billions were added. This perception
helped `frame' the later debates and discussions and the cost at the end had
gone up to at least $11 billion.
The perception of poor management. Hence by the time of cancellation, not
only was the cost rising endlessly (or so it seemed), the management
performance to date by the DOE and physicists gave no confidence things
could be got back on track.
By the time of the SSC's death the broad domestic political debate was largely
centered on the deficit and deficit reduction (e.g., Perot's run for President in
1992). Thus the new Congress that met in 1993 was a very different beast
from the one that approved the SSC in 1987 and was seriously eyeing cuts
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the SSC ended up directly against the Space Station. By 1993, the Congress had decided there
had to be a symbolic sacrifice to appease the deficit gods and it came down to the SSC vs the
Space Station. Only one winner in that fight.
Very hard to make a clear and punchy public case for the science of the SSC:
What the heck is the Higgs Boson and why should we care?
The Super Conducting Super Collider
- courtesy Robert Smith
• Enemies: Scientist opponents of the SSC were willing to speak
out very publicly against the SSC. It's bad when a Princeton
Nobel Prize winner testifies on the Hill against your project. A
widespread fear that the SSC would eat everyone's lunch +
some opponents were angry at the hype (SSC would cure AIDs
etc).
• The high energy physicists did a poor if not inept job of
constructing a strong `coalition' of supporters. They certainly
seem to have started woefully late.
• With the end of the Cold War, high energy physics was just not
as prestigious by 1993 as it had been earlier. Molecular biology
had eclipsed it (e.g. the Genome Project)
New York Times, 10 November 2010
NATURE | EDITORIAL
Scope for change
Nature 468, 346 (18 November 2010)
Tough lessons must be learned if NASA
is to avoid repeating a costly accounting
error.
“Given Hubble's transformational impact on astronomy — and on the
wider public's engagement with science — the case for a nextgeneration, all-purpose space observatory seems as strong as ever.
That makes it all the more urgent to launch the JWST in a timely
manner. Once Hubble is retired, the JWST will become the crucial
tool with which astronomers can follow up on discoveries made by
wide-field survey telescopes on the ground and in space.”
The Super Conducting Super Collider
- courtesy Robert Smith
• Enemies: Scientist opponents of the SSC were willing to speak
out very publicly against the SSC. It's bad when a Princeton
Nobel Prize winner testifies on the Hill against your project. A
widespread fear that the SSC would eat everyone's lunch +
some opponents were angry at the hype (SSC would cure AIDs
etc).
• The high energy physicists did a poor if not inept job of
constructing a strong `coalition' of supporters. They certainly
seem to have started woefully late.
• With the end of the Cold War, high energy physics was just not
as prestigious by 1993 as it had been earlier. Molecular biology
had eclipsed it (e.g. the Genome Project)