High Energy Administration: Big Science Model for the Future?

Abstract

7lHE ADMINISTRATION OF at the level has been studied in depth over the past decade. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration in particular has provided an organizational setting for such examination, and the NASA experience has illustrated that the unit for managing the most massive of big technologies must be nationwide. Meanwhile students of public administration have searched with less success for administrative patterns for which anticipate the probable necessity for administration of the most costly of scientific research. Officers of the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and other leading scientific organizations may be reluctant to frame the question in such terms as of scientific installations. But the nation must be alerted that there is really no alternative with the operation of such instruments as multi-million dollar telescopes and $300 million nuclear accelerators already facing us. Of course one major difference exists between management of big science (basic science) and big technology (applied science). Big technology such as space research and development has been recognized for years as a job for the government. But big science traditionally has been lodged in the universities and in the few federal laboratories which formally carry the title national but are actually regional in nature. While support has come from agen) The author asserts that the Atomic Energy Commission's $300 million 200 BEV atom smasher now under construction near Chicago is the first genuine scientific laboratory developed in this country. He bases the contention on the fact that the accelerator is being constructed and will be operated by the Universities Research Association, Inc. (URA). The article traces the procedure whereby the National Academy of Sciences and the AEC aided 46 universities in creating URA. Since the federal scientific establishment views URA's management of the accelerator as a test case for future operation of high-cost scientific installations, the author concludes that failure of the consortium would diminish the role of universities in directing American science.