Speaker of the House Paul Ryan gives a thumbs-up as he addresses the annual National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington, DC, March 21, 2017. Image credit: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images.

Cutting science funding today costs us more overall

If you think federal funding for science is expensive, wait until you see the cost of not funding it.

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan

How much money should we spend on funding our grandest scientific endeavors as a society? Should we be trying to send humans to Mars? Trying to cure cancer? Investigate the mysteries of deep space? Working to develop new vaccines? Monitoring our climate and weather to better predict natural disasters? These are all questions that many of us have opinions on, but that — at some point or another — federal funding has been used to help develop. What most of us don’t realize is that if the expected federal funding ever fails to come through, due to cuts, delays or even furloughs, every one of these projects becomes more expensive in the long run.

The James Webb Space Telescope vs. Hubble in size (main) and vs. an array of other telescopes (inset) in terms of wavelength and sensitivity. Its power is truly unprecedented. Image credit: NASA / JWST team.

To understand this, we don’t have to look any further than NASA’s flagship mission of this decade: the James Webb Space Telescope. James Webb will be the greatest observatory ever launched into space, far exceeding the capabilities of even Hubble. It will be…