“NASA’s Relationship with Nanotechnology: Past, Present and Future Challenges” has just been published by Rice University’s (located in Texas) Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper claims that the US National  Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) needs to invest more money in nanotechnology research or risk being eclipsed by other countries in the ‘race to space’.

The Oct. 16, 2012 news release from Rice University provides more information,

The paper sheds light on a broad field that holds tremendous potential for improving space flight by reducing the weight of spacecraft and developing smaller and more accurate sensors.

This area of research, however, saw a dramatic cutback from 2004 to 2007, when NASA reduced annual nanotechnology R&D expenditures from $47 million to $20 million. NASA is the only U.S. federal agency to scale back investment in this area, the authors found, and it’s part of an overall funding trend at NASA. From 2003 to 2010, while the total federal science research budget remained steady between $60 billion and $65 billion (in constant 2012 dollars), NASA’s research appropriations decreased more than 75 percent, from $6.62 billion to $1.55 billion.

…

“The United States currently lacks a national space policy that ensures the continuity of research and programs that build on existing capabilities to explore space, and that has defined steps for human and robotic exploration of low-Earth orbit, the moon and Mars,” Matthews said [Kirstin Matthews, one of researchers and a co-author]. “With Congress and the president wrestling over the budget each year, it is vital that NASA present a clear plan for science and technology R&D that is linked to all aspects of the agency. This includes connecting R&D, with nanotechnology as a lead area, to applications related to the agency’s missions.”

H/T to R&D magazine where I first saw the news item which led me to the Rice University news release and paper.

I have read the paper, which was written by the research team of  Baker Institute science and technology policy fellow Kirstin Matthews, current Rice graduate student Kenneth Evans and former graduate students Padraig Moloney and Brent Carey, and found that much of the reasoning is based on the notion that nanotechnology research is fundamental to wining the ‘space race’. Strikingly, there is very little attempt to explain or justify this reasoning. It’s a little disconcerting and reminds me of joining a conversation that’s been in progress for some time and where the context has been long established  leaving the new participant struggling to catch up and in the position of asking ‘dumb’ questions. For example, how important is leading the ‘race to space’?

In general, this paper seems to reflect a fairly high level of anxiety about US scientific superiority (from the news release),

The authors said that to effectively engage in new technology R&D, NASA should strengthen its research capacity and expertise by encouraging high-risk, high-reward projects to help support and shape the future of U.S. space exploration

“Failure to make these changes, especially in a political climate of flat or reduced funding, poses substantial risk that the United States will lose its leadership role in space to other countries — most notably China, Germany, France, Japan and Israel — that make more effective use of their R&D investments,” Matthews said.

I sometimes think the current US interest in space exploration is a way of harkening back to the glory days of the 1960s where US scientific superiority was unassailable. Much of this superiority was based on the US successfully beating Russia in a race to place ‘a man on the moon’.