My goal as a planetary science researcher on Substack
A few years ago, while still a graduate student, I was talking with a friend of mine at the American Geophysical Union conference. We were both looking for a postdoctoral position in planetary science. We had met plenty of scientists who would be happy to hire us as postdoctoral researchers but very few of them had the funding. In other words, the bottleneck was not finding people to work with but funding.
The science funding situation has only gotten more precarious since then. This inspired me to consider future possibilities for funding science in a more sustainable way and experiment with it myself, including crowdsourced through the Substack platform. To explain why this makes sense, let me provide a quick background to science funding in the United States.
Today, there are essentially three common ways to fund scientific research. These ways include government funding, usually for universities, private research institutes dependent on federal grants, or government agencies, for-profit startups, and private donation-based funding.
In the United States, most federally funded research is supported through government agencies or departments like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. The main advantage with federal funding is that it is ideal for research that does not have an immediate business case, like a robotic mission to Europa. The primary drawback of federal funding is that it is competitive and how much funding any research project receives depends on whether it aligns with the policy goals of a particular administration or government.
For-profit startups are a good approach when the goal of the research is to produce a product, such as an AI model or a new power source. The startup method provides efficiency and low cost. Just think of how SpaceX has revolutionized the launch industry by bringing down the cost of spaceflight by providing powerful and (mostly) reliable launch vehicles. The primary drawback of the startup model is that it doesn’t work if there is not an immediate profit to be made. There currently is not a business case for searching for life on Mars or sending quadcopters to Titan.
Another more philosophical problem with relying too heavily on a for-profit approach to funding space science is that thinking of everything in terms of profit tends to take away from the spirit of exploration and appreciation of the intrinsic value of science that fundamental research should inspire. We explore the universe because it is inherently worth exploring not because of what we can economically gain from it.
The third source of funding is through large donations to nonprofit organizations that conduct scientific research. Most major museums like the American Museum of Natural History, individual research fellowships like the Heising-Simons Foundation’s 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship, and certain prestigious research institutions like Carnegie Science are funded this way.
Donors tend to give on principle meaning that projects do not need to have an immediate financial benefit or relevance to the current space policy goals of the day. They just need to align with the goals and values of the donor. The main drawback of this approach is that the values and goals of the donor can heavily sway what kind of research is done.
These three approaches to funding all have their strengths, but with each of them something is missing. Some research projects may be vital, but not large enough for federal funding, not exciting enough for a startup, and too niche for large donors to support. These include projects which may only cost a few thousand dollars to cover lab or field equipment and are studying something interesting but commonplace like the distribution of wild bees in the California desert.
Besides these three ways of funding research is crowdsourced funding. Donations are still involved, but unlike with institutions like Carnegie Science, donations tend to be small and the number of donors is much larger so a single donor will not have quite as much influence. A recent example of crowdfunded research in the space sector is the Planetary Society’s successful LightSail project to build a functioning spacecraft powered by light pressure propulsion, aka, solar sails. Functional solar sails have the potential to make spaceflight cheaper by reducing the need for backup fuel. It was funded entirely by donations from individual Planetary Society members.
While crowdfunding is unlikely to fund a multi-billion dollar mission to Uranus, there is potential for crowdsourced funding to support research projects that are vital but too small to receive federal funding. Crowdsourced funding can also support vital research which is still too commonplace to interest venture capitalists, who typically only support projects that they perceive as groundbreaking or sufficiently ambitious.
Another advantage of crowdfunded research is the potential for public outreach. If researchers are seeking to convince members of the educated public to support them, this forces them to develop skills in science communication. Scientific research is meant to be shared with the world and the best way to show the value of science is to directly communicate its significance to the public and invite them to be part of it.
This combination of public engagement and possibility to fund small to medium level projects is why I chose Substack for this experiment. Instead of asking for crowdfunding for specific projects, my goals is to use the Substack model and publish a weekly newsletter to keep subscribers updated on my ongoing research projects. This will both provide stability through constant revenue from subscriptions and a natural channel for science communication.
Most of these weekly newsletters are and will continue to be free, alternating between commentary on the latest science discoveries, proposals for exciting research ideas, and philosophical reflections on the value of science and exploration. By sharing my research results through regular newsletters, I seek to build a relationship with my readers so that they feel connected with my work enough to want to subscribe. Science after all is for everyone and everyone should be able support the scientific investigations that excite them.
The newsletters focusing specifically on updates to my current research projects, however, will be for my paid subscribers. These newsletters will come at least once a month, so that supporters know my monthly progress. I will also provide my supporters with any published abstracts, preprints, or datasets from my research as far as I am permitted to do so. In this sense, my supporters are paying for the newsletter updates on the research which they have agreed to support. The revenue from the paid subscriptions of this newsletter will go to financially cover the costs of the research, including software, travel to conferences, open access paper submissions, laboratory space, and the equivalent of a research stipend.
A project I specifically have in mind to fund through Substack is to use machine learning to compare the mysterious coronae (regions of concentric ridges) on Miranda and Venus to determine if they are truly analogous features, which has significant implications for icy moon geology and habitability. Since coronae have been suggested to be related to plate subduction, Venus-like coronae on Miranda could indicate a way that vital nutrients could get into the proposed subsurface ocean of Miranda, increasing the chances that the tiny moon, and icy moons like it, could support life.
Why would readers support my work? That is a fair question. My credibility comes from the fact that I have a successful track record as a researcher. I have spent years doing planetary science work, during which I was an intern at Jet Propulsion Laboratory for two years, earned my PhD, and have two papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last 18 months. I know how to do research, collaborate with colleagues and get work published, which at least makes me qualified for a more conventional research position.
The intended outcome of this experiment is to make decentralized approaches to science funding more commonplace and build trust between scientists doing research and non-scientists who want to support science and discovery. If you are excited about planetary exploration or just want to see science become more open and democratic, I would be honored to have you join me and subscribe. You won’t just be supporting a project but helping build a new model of science is done. Let’s build a better future together.
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