I’m late to picking up the catch phrase: “the horrors persist, but so do I” in response to the daily question: “how are you doing?” But this year has pushed me to move beyond the stock option of “just fine” or worse “living the dream.” For context, I live in Los Angeles and in January hundreds of my colleagues lost their homes in the Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires. Over and over I caught myself starting a conversation with, “And how are you doing?” What did I expect someone to say who had just lost their home and all their belongings? Someone who barely escaped with their dog and a bag of random items. Lucky were the ones who just came back from travel and still had a packed suitcase with them. Did I want them to reassure me that they were fine and I didn’t have to take care of them? After that thought occurred to me, I made a real effort not to ask, but it is a hard habit to break. 

As devastating as the Los Angeles fires were to everyone in the area, a tectonic shift with a much broader, national impact is under way as the new administration is reprioritizing funding for science and engineering. If you are one of the many researchers who makes their living through competitively-selected, federally-funded research, your world has changed in ways previously unimaginable. These changes impact everyone from the individual faculty member at a university looking to fund the research of their graduate students to large international teams building the next generation of space telescopes. Each time I think, “This project surely must be safe from cuts,” I’m proven wrong.

Though having spent over three decades in the field provides an important perspective. NASA has launched many space missions that were canceled in their time only to be returned from the threshold of termination. And it is right and proper that there should be a vigorous debate, in the scientific community, in the public, and in congress about how to prioritize precious public funding. Funding that often provides no immediate economic benefits other than demonstrating the nation’s superior capabilities and dedication to advance human knowledge (aside from the obvious support to the people who are building these amazing machines). As a people, we have been generous beyond measure by sharing with the world not only claims of insight, but the methods and underlying data and including the use of the observatories we built. In turn, we have attracted talented individuals, like myself, to contribute to the success of the American Experiment. 

What more can we ask from the world than to send us their best and brightest to spend their formative years here and then return home forever changed by our ideas and values? Or to give them the option to settle here and to make us a stronger, richer, freer society? Still too often do I now hear the narrative that we don’t get a fair deal, or that it all goes to fraud, waste and abuse. This narrative is deeply demoralizing to the men and women who have dedicated their careers to imagine and to achieve mighty things. Whether it is understanding the structure of the universe, looking for life on distant planets, or returning carefully curated samples from Mars. 

It is this constant stream of enormous achievements and the steadfastness of my colleagues that give me hope and the strength to go on. It is knowing that the public funding of science and technology has always waxed and waned while laying the foundation of the continuing prosperity of our nation. That’s how I persist.