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While the "Super Bowl of Astronomy" is missing NASA; there is also an Aerospace Job Fair (click here) taking place in Seattle, the home of Boeing taking place as well. All this is happening because Trump wants a "campaign moment" at his State of the Union address at the end of January.
January 6, 2018
Seattle - The world’s largest airborne observatory (click here) was supposed to be parked in Seattle this week, so thousands of scientists attending the “Super Bowl of Astronomy” could behold this marvel: a Boeing 747 with a massive telescope protruding from the back used to study the fundamental mysteries of the universe.
But conference-goers will not be able to see NASA’s space-exploring plane. Its visit to the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society was canceled, one of a growing list of scientific casualties of the partial government shutdown now stretching into its third week.
Along with the plane, hundreds of government scientists are also no longer allowed to attend the conference or two other major scientific gatherings scheduled to begin this week. Those meetings will address pressing issues in the fields of technology, space exploration, extreme weather and climate change.
But the shutdown’s impact on science stretches well beyond the empty chairs at this week’s conferences, said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. It means some of the nation’s smartest scientific minds are sitting at home, not doing science, for weeks, with no clear end in sight.
“That’s difficult to recover from,” said Seitter. “We’ll be seeing ripple effects from this for a long time.”...
