David Reinecke, Princeton University
When
Abstract: An emblematic feature of big science is its tremendous cost, with price tags for particle accelerators, space telescopes, or large-scale collaborative infrastructures stretching into the billions of dollars. Such resource intensity creates significant constraints on future experiments and invites considerable controversy before any new starts. With few exceptions, existing work in the history and sociology of science has taken these costs for granted as technologically determined, politically motivated, or a byproduct of uncertainty. Joining together theory from economic sociology and science and technology studies, this paper advances an alternative explanation for big science's exorbitant costs using a relational approach to science funding. In this view, the creation and circulation of science funds serve to maintain, negotiate, or sometimes dissolve the socio-technical relationships on which scientific experiments are built. The high costs of big science reflect efforts to sustain the complex network of participating scientists, research institutions, industrial contractors, and collaborative infrastructures powering experiments while also investing in new science. The predominance of human, rather than capital, costs casts serious doubts on the ability of funders to reduce science expenditures without damaging research communities. The project elaborates this explanation using data collected from archival and interview research over six decades of NASA-funded robotic spaceflight missions in the Solar System—a paradigmatic case of big science.