big science and the transits of venus 125
of this restructuring were the International Space Station (ISS), an ex-
travagant joint effort of sixteen nations, and the acclaimed Hubble Space
Telescope (Broad 2004 ; Chang 2004 ). The withdrawal of funds would have
been a deathblow to both projects. This restructuring led some observers
to question “whether science will benefit by or be destroyed by this new
proposal’’ and whether science is simply the “first casualty of the new era”
(Chang 2004 ; Overbye 2004 ). The most spirited debate focused on the fate
of Hubble, often heralded as the most significant instrument of modern as-
tronomy and the “best marriage of human spaceflight and science” (Over-
bye 2004 ; Benson 2004 ). Prioritizing a back- to- the- moon program over the
maintenance of Hubble seemed to fly in the face of scientific logic. These
concerns mirror earlier public debates. In 1963 , a New York Times editorial
questioned “whether the prospective gain in prestige outweighs the loss in
development of scientific and human resources in other directions that the
United States will inevitably suffer by such large scale concentration of its
energies and abilities on an intensified moon race” (January 29 , 1963 , 6 ).
Similarly, Senator William Fulbright’s words during a congressional review
of the space- program budget sound as pointed today as they did in the hey-
days of the space race: “Assuming that prestige can be bought, who can say
with any degree of certainty how much it costs and what kind of activity
pays the richest dividends?” (Whelan 1968 , 249 ).^1
The prospects for a renewed space race were diminished, at least tem-
porarily, in the wake of the global economic crisis. American budgetary
planning for 2011 threatened to cancel NASA’s moon and Mars programs
altogether (Matson 2010 ). Nevertheless, the Chinese space program, the
reactions it generates, and the subsequent American space initiative are
but the latest illustrations of the attractiveness of Big Science as a prestige-
enhancing instrument. The debate regarding the effect of the space initia-
tive on the budgeting of Hubble highlights the recurring tension between
Big Science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Kay ( 1994 ) goes
even further by suggesting that the political logic of Big Science works
against the scientific and technological viability of such projects.
Understanding Big Science
The term Big Science has been in use since the late 1950 s, when, in the wake
of World War II and the Sputnik launch, a surge of government funds gen-
erated large- scale, state- funded scientific endeavors. By the early 1960 s, Big
