What is the report’s reason for having a healthy science and engineering workforce? Increase the progress we make in our space enterprise.

While not precisely circular, the writing does suggest that by enhancing the role of space, we can reach the goal of enhancing the health of the space endeavor. I would say that, to make increased prominence in a “national vision” sense realistic, you would have to both dedicate more verbal attention to space and to spend more money. While the authors do not explicitly say this, I interpret an invocation of the Apollo days as a referral to a time when we rapidly increased spending and verbal commitment to the space enterprise. Part of making young people see exciting careers in space includes paying for exciting careers in space. Thus, the argument of the authors becomes that we should foster a healthy space enterprise by dedicating more resources to the space enterprise. This is probably true. However, this point can be made without pointing to projections of a scientist shortage, which, as I wrote in the post, I’m skeptical about for reasons outlined in the posts I provided links to.

So, my imprecise use of “circular”, applies to the authors’ assertion that we will need more scientists for a healthier space program, and that we need to promote the health of the space program to get more scientists. Since one justifies the other in the paper, Abbey and Lane bring us to a position where we can continually increase resources to the space program as long as they can make the claim that we will not have enough scientists in the future.

If trends continue as expected by those other organizations, there will be a decline in the number of scientists. A projected shortfall of scientists is bad news for the sciences. Makes sense, right?

One possible way to help mitigate or reduce this projected decline would be to encourage potential future scientists. One way they thing would be effective is to give space and the space program more attention.

How is this circular?