Leader of NASA Project Tells of Bumpy Mission in Washington

There were times when Charles Kennel must have felt a little like the spy who came in from the cold.

After years of researching such esoteric subjects as space plasma physics and the aurora borealis, Kennel was asked to go to Washington to lead one of the most ambitious science projects in the world. He is back at UCLA after more than two years in Washington, and he is easing into his new role as executive vice chancellor of the Westwood campus.

In these days of tight budgets, Washington is viewed as the enemy camp by many scientists who depend on federal funding for their research. And Kennel had been there during a tumultuous period when even the most basic goals of science were under attack.

What was it like for an academician to take the reins of NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth?

“It completely changed my life,” Kennel says. “It was a very stimulating experience, just fabulous.”

A strange appraisal, perhaps, from a college professor thrust into a top management role that left him open to attacks from conservative politicians. He found his basic commitment to science challenged by many on Capitol Hill, who viewed NASA’s ambitious effort to learn more about our planet as just another way to curb personal freedoms--as sometimes happens with environmental monitoring programs--and expand federal empires.

What he learned, he says, is that tighter budgets need not necessarily result in weak programs. But he reached that conclusion after a lot of confrontations, some of which he found shocking.

When he arrived in Washington 2 1/2 years ago, NASA was under attack, he says. NASA’s overall projected annual budget of about $22 billion by 2000 had been slashed, leaving NASA officials wondering how they were going to carry out basic programs.

“It was a very tough time to be coming in,” Kennel says. “NASA was under extraordinary stress.”

His first year of directing the largest environmental science program in the world was difficult, he says, but at least he was dealing with seasoned politicians “who had been in place [chairing key committees] for a long time. They had a very detailed understanding of each and every program.”

Then came the “Republican revolution,” bringing new members to Congress and ousting old-line politicians from leadership roles.

“They came in from ground zero, and they wanted to argue about the basic value of science,” Kennel says. “They started with some very severe attacks on science that were absolutely shocking.”

He says a drive to eliminate such scientific organizations as the U.S. Geological Survey stunned members of the scientific community. And although that effort was later abandoned, it was clear that there would be no free lunches for scientists in Washington.

Kennel’s program was particularly vulnerable. The Mission to Planet Earth will use a wide range of satellites to monitor everything from crops and weather around the world to biological production in

the oceans. The goal is to provide scientists with the data they need to predict storms and seasonal variations more accurately, and ultimately to monitor long-term changes in global weather patterns.

But the new Congress saw it differently. Many lawmakers believed it was nothing more than an artifact from the high-spending liberal establishment they had come to change. Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Science Committee, has been especially harsh in his criticism, and it is no secret that he would like to see the program killed.

Kennel believes a vigorous education program has partially resolved the philosophical differences, but he was still left with trying to develop a comprehensive program with less than half the funding that had been expected.

To achieve that, Kennel and NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, who had lured him to Washington, eliminated the program’s reliance on huge orbiting satellites that would have to be launched by the space shuttle or a Titan rocket. They substituted many smaller, cheaper satellites that could be replaced often during the decades ahead. That is one change that Walker had long sought. That helped bring the total cost of Mission to Planet Earth down from a projected $17 billion for this decade to $6.8 billion.

“We will still be making the same basic 24 measurements needed to get a comprehensive climate picture,” Kennel says, “and we’ve gone to a much more flexible program.”

As new technology develops, new satellites will replace older ones, and scientists will not be limited by antiquated technology aboard huge orbiting platforms that are too expensive to replace. “We have built choice into the system,” he says.

He admits that the mission will not have the tools that it would have had if NASA had been able to get the full $17 billion, but he believes the revised program will be able to meet its challenges.

“And we’ve gotten out of the business of keeping the technology the same year after year after year,” he says. “We’re going to let the way we achieve scientific goals evolve with time.”

* Lee Dye can be reached via e-mail at 72040.3515@compuserve.com.