fusion

inertial confinement fusion operating
budget, which will most likely affect
the advanced laser and heavy ion fusion
programs. At the same time, the
committee added $25 million to the
Nova laser fusion program at Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory, a program
the administration budget request
had cut to zero.
That the cuts are based on nothing
but a blind austerity mentality is clear
from the remarks of subcommittee
chairman Tom Bevill (D-Ala.). The
DOE's Buchsbaum committee is now
reviewing the whole magnetic fusion
program, Bevill said, so why put more
money in when the program might
be changed
As Bevill should know, other DOE
reviews of specific fusion projects and
all the recommendations from the
Advisory Panel on Fusion set up by
Congressman Mike McCormack (D-
Wash.) have advocated that the fusion
program be accelerated—which will
require adding to the budget. In effect,
the caution expressed by the
Appropriations subcommittee is simply
setting back a fusion timetable
that the scientific community agrees
should be accelerated.
If the Buchsbaum review recommends
to the DOE Energy Research
Advisory Board that the fusion program
should be accelerated, the DOE
can submit a supplemental budget
request for fiscal year 1981. In the
meanwhile, however, the fusion program
will not have the funds it needs,
and at least six months will be lost on
the Engineering Test Facility, as well
as other projects in progress.
Appropriations Ctte.
Terminates NASA
Solar Polar Mission
The House Appropriations Committee
voted May 9 to terminate the
Solar Polar Mission, one of the most
important scientific projects remaining
under the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA had already postponed the
launch date of the two-satellite project
from 1983 to 1985, in an attempt
to meet the committee's requirement
that the agency "balance its budget."
The committee cut all the mission's
funding in the 1980 supplemental
budget, which, in effect, immediately
ends the program.
Committee member Edward Boland
(D-Mass.) said that the committee
took its action because "NASA didn't
cancel anything in the budget
squeeze, it just deferred a few
things." Earlier in the week, another
congressional appropriations subcommittee
cut $60 million from the
committee's fiscal year 1981 authorization
for magnetic fusion research,
giving similar reasons.
The Solar Polar Mission involves simultaneously
launching two satellites
in opposite directions that will go
over the poles of the earth and then
orbit the sun from opposite directions,
providing unique measurements
of the sun's magnetic fields and
other phenomena.
A $320 million project, the Solar
Polar Mission is a joint undertaking
An artist's depiction of Solar Polar spacecraft cruising past Jupiter en route to
the Sun's poles. Jupiter's gravity provides a boost toward the Sun for Solar
Polar and is also a subject for study for many of the instruments on board.
with the European Space Agency
(ESA), which is paying for one-half the
mission's total cost. In a strongly
worded letter of protest to NASA Administrator
Robert Frosch, ESA executive
director Roy Gibson explained
that the Europeans had already spent
$30 million to design one of the two
spacecraft and instruments required
for the experiment.
According to NASA spokesmen,
protest letters have also been received
from West Germany, Great
Britain, France, Belgium, and Italy, all
of which were to participate in the
mission. The Europeans now consider
NASA an "unreliable partner" in cooperative
programs. At stake, NASA
officials fear, is not only the specific
project the subcommittee has canceled
and the loss of important data,
but further "downstream" NASA-ESA
collaboration.
In his letter to Frosch, ESA head
Gibson indicated that the program's
cancellation would eliminate 25 percent
of Europe's space efforts for the
next three years; ESA would suffer
not only an immediate loss of $30
million, but also an ultimate loss of
$80 million, Gibson said. This is the
first time an international space program
has been canceled by the default
of one of the partners.
Reportedly both the State Department
and President Carter's science
advisor Dr. Frank Press are concerned
about the diplomatic repercussions of
the congressional action. One NASA
official commented that it appeared
some people were trying to make the
United States "pull in its tentacles and
become a Dark Age society." He rec- \,
ommended that Americans write protest
letters directly to President Carter
and to House Appropriations subcommittee
chairman Boland (see
box, page 23).
22 FUSION August 1980