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Planetary News: Search for Life (2005)Planetary Society Marks Passing of SETI Critic, Senator William ProxmireA Letter from Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society16 December 2005 On December 15 former Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin died at the age of 90. Proxmire was no friend of the space program, and in 1979 he gave one his famous “golden fleece” awards for wasteful government spending to NASA for its research in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A few years later he was instrumental in stopping government support for SETI. But Proxmire also provided The Planetary Society with one of its greatest victories, and consequently earned the respect of Carl Sagan and the organization for his willingness to listen. In the early 1980s NASA’s SETI program, known as the Microwave Observing Project (MOP), was gaining momentum. NASA Ames was preparing a targeted search, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was conducting preliminary work towards an all-sky survey. It all came to a sudden stop in 1982, when Proxmire led the Senate to discontinue all federal funding for SETI. The ban took effect just as a group of American scientists, led by SETI pioneers Frank Drake and Bernard Oliver, were about to set out to what was to be a seminal international conference in Tallinn, Estonia. Without the funds they could not go. Sagan said the newly-formed Planetary Society would help.
Sagan contacted the Sloan Foundation and arranged for The Planetary Society to apply for a grant. The Society got the grant and saved American participation and funding for the conference. We also began raising funds from our members to support private SETI research, a practice we continue to this day. But at the same time, we began a series of meetings with Senator Proxmire’s staff, which culminated in a couple of meetings between Sagan and the Senator. I was fortunate enough to have been a participant in one of them. Sagan explained SETI as a scientific topic and the radio astronomy techniques of listening for possible signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. He presented the Senator with the scientific rationale for SETI and the basis for the experimental approach. Proxmire never became totally convinced of the value of SETI, but he did admit it was not a “golden fleece.” Most importantly, he agreed to look the other way when the next request for NASA funding for SETI came before the Congress. He did. NASA’s SETI program was restored in 1983 and continued for another decade. The restoration of NASA’s SETI program in the early 1980s allowed the Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build radio receivers and conduct SETI research. In October 1992 NASA launched the High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) -- a full-time SETI observation program. Less than a year later, the project was killed by a different Senator, who again initiated a Congressional ban on federal funding for SETI. This time the ban stuck, and all SETI activity became private. The restoration of NASA SETI in the 1980s was the Society’s first political victory, which helped establish us both in Washington and in the space community. It was due in a large part to Carl Sagan’s personal leadership and his ability to explain science. But it was also due to the willingness of a very skeptical Senator to listen to reason. I was impressed by Proxmire personally and by his willingness (rare for a politician) to back down in the face of an intellectual argument. |
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