NASA's James Webb Space Telescope faces potential 20% budget cut
space.com
space.com
To the contrary, I found the London science museum amazing. Great exhibits and great presentation.
From Slide 26: "$317M supports the operation of Great Observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble, and Chandra".
Can't some of the money that's been saved from other cutting channeled to NASA?
They still don't understand that they voted for this specific thing, nobody was shy during the campaign about what was to come.
Which means that either companies find commercial value in space telescopes or else we just don't have space telescopes.
But don't worry, we'll always have luxury trips into LEO for billionaires.
(Human space flight is also a waste of money, for reasons I explained in other posts. Other than entertaining children, it serves almost no constructive purpose whatsoever. And the space tourism niche is basically a joke.)
Specifically for privatizing space telescopes or privatizing NASA as a whole I don't think that has been on the table, but you can imagine a scenario in which eventually something like 20%, 40%, 90% or some other significant portion of NASA's "funding" is just a pass-through vehicle for private contracts.
Honestly if you want to learn and understand more about some of these activities you can just read the news because a lot of analysis is being done, well-informed opinions are being written, and indisputable factual evidence including quotes, interviews, and detailed data are publicly available. Admittedly some reporting is behind paywalls, but that's easy to get around. I understand it's not very fair to tell someone to "go read the news", but if you can't keep up with current events or you aren't willing to that's kind of just your problem. There are plenty of websites across the political spectrum ranging from the Financial Times to the Economist, to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, international journals, and more including locally focused websites that keep tabs with events going on at the federal, state, and local level. It's certainly a lot but it's your responsibility as a citizen (assuming you are American, apologies if not) to keep yourself informed and well read.
[1] I'm being charitable here because I personally believe that the goal is to just funnel money from government agencies to specific private enterprises that have the favor of the current administration. Crony Capitalism is what that is called. The current administration has not yet earned my trust to believe otherwise.
>”They don't want to destroy [NASA], just make it so useless they have pretext to privatize it.”
I just think they were wrong. I agree that the current administration does want to prevent the administrative agencies from doing many things, but I don’t think anyone is actually looking to privatize NASA or the telescopes.
Take something like the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA could potentially build its own rockets to launch its own telescopes [1]. Instead what we might see is NASA wants to launch a rocket with their telescope, but their capacity to launch a rocket has been privatized via contracts that go to private enterprise instead of through NASA.
Since many in the Trump administration have espoused the belief that existing functions of government and/or administrative agencies would be better off privatized or completely cut, many are worried that the same fate awaits NASA with crony capitalism as the end result.
When you say that you don't think anyone is looking to privatize NASA or the telescopes, instead what you should be considering isn't NASA being completely privatized in the sense that it's now a private entity separate from the government, but you should be considering NASA as being privatized in the sense that Congress and the Trump administration allocate taxpayer dollars through NASA to private enterprise for existing or potentially new NASA functions in the future. It's less so about literal 100% privatization, and more so about someone who happens to have a rocket company gets taxpayer allocated funding "from NASA" to provide services. I also don't think NASA as it exists today will be 100% privatized, maybe 40% is privatized, etc. , and the space telescopes won't be because they don't generate revenue, but what I do think will happen and it's up to the Trump administration to convince me that this isn't the case and earn my trust, is that they will allocate funding for NASA works specifically to private enterprise that is in favor with the current administration in a form of crony capitalism.
One way to maybe think about this would be imagine that we "privatized" the IRS and in order to file your taxes you would have to file through one of many existing vendors who have contracts from the IRS and charge you to file your taxes. Does that feel right? Why can't we just file directly with the IRS?
[1] I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, it's just an example.
Any source for that?
The profit margin has to come from somewhere.
I would know, I work for the government.
In some cases they want the federal agency to completely stop doing things and let the private sector do them instead: for example the National Weather Service.
Some folks (e.g., the CEO of AccuWeather) wants zero free weather reports from the government, and you'd have to go to a private corporation to get a forecast.
John Oliver had a segment on it during Trump 1.0:
Neoliberalism has more to do with beliefs (religion) than facts. We all have been conditioned to think through this frame. Thatcher etc, great results. :-)
There are only a few who do the measurements (aka science). The efficient company vs the inefficient government, it exists, but as a myth.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/iss-deorbit-...
Not only does Musk have a lot of power to get favors granted to him now, but I'm sure he also realizes that there could be significant backlash against him and his companies during a future administration, if his and Trump's actions turn out to be as broadly, bipartisan-ly unpopular as I'm hoping. So not only will he want to extract as much as he can from the government now, he'll want to consolidate and increase his lead over his competitors so a future administration may have no choice but to continue using SpaceX for the bulk of its needs.
And on the topic of dead end technology, let's face the fact that the ISS is just Mir 2 with US participation. The DOS-8 module it's built around is the module Mir 2 was to be built around, Mir (1) being DOS-7, and the previous DOSes were the Salyut stations. Direct hardware lineage. The only reason these things exist in the first place is because the Soviet Union though space stations would be good for earth observation, a role they are wholly obsolete in now, but once the Soviet Union started building something they liked to keep building it long after it made sense (see also, the Vostok capsule, which they are still using as a satellite bus to this day.). And the only reason the US is involved in this is literally welfare to the Russian aerospace industry to prevent their engineers from having to seek employment in Iran/etc. In this role too, it is obviously obsolete.
Now a word about Mars, because I can already sense somebody about to accuse me of being a senseless musk fanboy. Mars colonization makes no sense and musk is lying about pursuing it. For a Mars colony to actually become a "backup for humanity" of whatever drivel he claims, it would need to bootstrap itself into self sufficiency, which at the very least would require a viable economy for trading with Earth. No such economic plan for a Mars colony exists. Furthermore, SpaceX isn't even investing in the creation of the requisite colony hardware, the habitats and Martian industrial infrastructure which would be required to make it work. What they're actually doing is far more mundane; building rockets for launching satellite into Earth orbit. The Mars talk is just a recruitment tactic to pull in young idealistic engineers and get them to work long hours for cheap.
His move away from the previously-stated mission for Tesla to decarbonize the world's energy systems makes a lot more sense now
IMHO if someone wanted to cut the James Webb the time to do it was 15 years ago. Now that it is actually flying and producing the best images of the cosmos to date it is too late. Those costs are fully sunk. The ongoing running costs are downright modest by government standards. Plus the project is visible enough that cuts are likely to result in public outcry.
That said I am unsure if that is that much of a blow. The government is very good at some things, it looks to me (I am a casual observer) that SpaceX has eaten their lunch in terms of a space programme.
But the James Webb was exactly the sort of incredibly difficult, high risk project that NASA (and Government labs generally) excel at. No private company would ever do something like that. It is a huge achievement and is changing our view, again, of the Universe.
So I guess it will be doomed now too. Noting so dangerous as a good example.
SLS was never about being the most practical and/or efficient launcher. It is a pork barrel project, but one with an important role. In particular, it is maintaining vital aerospace industrial capacity. If the US wants things like ICBMs then programs like SLS are a necessary evil.
Just look at the suppliers working on the SLS SRBs and those working on the LGM-35 program, perhaps then you'll see the extent of the overlap. Furthermore, you might want to look into why the space shuttle had the architecture it did, and why space shuttle SRBs were being shipped out of Utah. Large scale SRB manufacturing has been, and continues to be, an enormous problem for the DoD. Hence why wasteful programs like SLS exist.
I suspect the facilities working on SLS solid rocket boosters are owned by Northrop Grumman, just like the companies that were left over from making Peacekeeper missiles, now making Sentinel missiles, are probably now owned by Northrop Grumman. This doesn't show that Sentinel - or any other program - is benefitting from SLS's supply chains in a meaningful way. It's hard to see how that's possible, given SLS's low-volume nature. But I guess I'll try to keep an open mind...
> Furthermore, you might want to look into why the space shuttle had the architecture it did
I have lots of opinions about that, but if you have some reference material you'd like to recommend, please do! (and if they support the notion that SLS SRB production is somehow a boon to SRB makers everywhere, I guess I'd be intrigued by that as well)
Typically when you have a situation warranting nukes you won't have time to fuel a falcon 9.
So, just because idea of using Falcon 9s as a delivery solution for a strategic nuclear deterrent may be as bad as ordering your chief designer to throw a big steel ball at the window of the new model of car you're currently in the middle of announcing even despite the guy's obvious reticence, doesn't mean it won't happen.
Someone makes an uneducated point but it must be defended because Musk bad...
Do you think you're making a good point here?
If Musk wants to push for "Falcon 9-based liquid-fueled ICBMs", he'll do so, even if he actually does know they're not the best/right tech for the job. And someone like Trump will listen to him.
It's also a bit in bad faith of you to play the "you only disagree because Musk bad" card, when GP explicitly acknowledges that these sorts of bad government decisions are not unique to the US/Trump/Musk.
However, there are potential military applications for a vehicle like Falcon 9. For example, imagine being able to insert a Special Operations team almost anywhere in the world on a few hours notice. In a potential near-peer conflict there will also be a need to quickly launch replacement military satellites to make up attrition losses.
So I'm seriously so, so curious, because you are far from the only person to think this, why do you think Mars is actually a facade to funnel money to his companies?
I think what you're saying is that he is obsessed with Mars and is simply taking advantage of his position to fund this goal more and also massively profit. This I can understand and I think is a very real concern. I don't think it's what the poster I originally replied to is saying though.
You don't have to believe anything Elon says, just look at what he has done for the past 22 years. SpaceX was founded on the singular purpose of getting to Mars. Elon originally tried to buy ICBMs from Russia to launch to Mars, when that fell through he started his own rocket company. The entire tech stack and rockets being built are to reduce the cost of mass to orbit by the orders of magnitude needed to colonize mars. There is no other reason to build something as huge as Starship. Elon IS funding getting to mars by himself, the Starship program is mostly self funded, with the Artemis HLS contract coming well after the program was started.
He's definitely obsessed with being seen by others as the guy who's going to be the first to Mars, but I'd put it in the same camp as his obsession with being seen as an elite Path of Exile 2 player.
Musk's position as CEO of SpaceX and head of DOGE is the most conflict-y of conflicts of interest when it comes to deciding what happens to NASA. It 100% doesn't matter if he is the truest of true believers in the need to make a settlement on Mars. We should not be giving him the power to dismantle other space-related efforts to fuel his personal project. Even if he is right at how critical Mars is, it is incredibly dangerous to allow people with conflicts of interest to be responsible for decisions on this scale.
He has no interest in being able to control himself for years at a time, nor is he interested in solving the difficult problems of such a long deep space endeavour. If he were, then he'd be cooperative and disciplined, and try to make progress in this area.
Furthermore you're saying that since SpaceX isn't working on problems of habitation and deep space survival that he's not serious about Mars?
Is that right?
What's your point, really, aside from nitpicking, when "orbiting the moon" is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the statement "been to the moon and back"?
Why would they want to do that? This administration is hell-bent on reducing spending, period, not moving it around, as well as crippling the executive branch's ability to govern. And they don't care what useful initiatives die due to their actions.
And I can't see Trump's supporters caring about this at all. He won the presidency in no small part because he acknowledged that people were facing financial strife, while Harris just kept repeating that the economy was great (implying that anyone with financial issues was either imagining it, or themselves at fault). Why would a Trump supporter care about some "elitist" scientist being able to look at celestial phenomena? They don't care about this stuff, sadly.
What are you a socialist? /s
[and to be clear, my quoting of Sam Altman is not meant to be taken as an endorsement of Sam Altman, but I suspect he has decent insight into Elon]
This isn't shocking but rage inducing.... We spent forever building this thing and successfully getting it up and operational... I know people who have worked on this... Elon musk isn't even a real physicist, he is a business and hype man that is able to get young engineers with dreams of contributing to a great dream to work for him with a terrible work-life balance.
Elon and Trump might be evil. But I don’t really believe in evil. And I keep underestimating both of them. It’s no longer a matter of choice; but if there is a positive possibility, I like to imagine it and make it a plausible pathway. Tons of bad things can happen; is there a path where the current direction could be very very good?
Government will become vastly more efficient.
And for a left field example: I suspect that the next few years will see a rapid advancement in the science of solar radiation management, aka geoengineering. This was never going to happen with status quo leadership. But the fact is that we will not stop using fossil fuels in the next couple decades. So we clearly need to minimize the known risk of climate change, (even for the unknown risks of geoengineering). It costs about $10b to put enough calcium carbonate or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to achieve heat balance and stop runaway climate change effects. Can’t have Florida flood, right?
Beyond that, there is a genuine likelihood that there will be a better economy and less war.
I’m not claiming this is the most likely outcome. But there is a reasonable chance that the next few years will work out really, really well.
This prediction is necessarily predicated on a reduction in budget with an expectation of similar performance, but the administration that is pursuing the budget cuts is also diligently working to remove accountability from the executive branch. I do not predict a more efficient government, but a less effective one.
As I said in another thread here, to solution to waste is not slashing budgets but better accountability. Without the latter there is no guarantee that any other attempted measures will have the expected results.
But I suspect you're not asking the question because you want to know the answer.
In any case it's partly aan impossible question at this stage because it hasn't been up so long. A lot of the research that came out of Hubble took years to complete and the datasets there were much much smaller.
Slashing the budget is not the correct way to combat waste. Accountability is. Otherwise a bad manager might claw back that 20% by firing whoever the top earners are, leaving nobody but the hand-sitters to run the show.
It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues. His team has already had to come crawling back to previously-fired staff a couple times at this point. I acknowledge that accountability is harder than running around with a loudspeaker and a machete, but that's a pretty bad reason not to even try.
And I'm just reporting on my personal experience. A common joke is if you don't want to learn new skills or contribute, you get sent to safety. Nobody is ever fired, and people are given fake tasks to go around and look like they're working. Saying we need to review accountability before layoffs in an organization that doesn't respond to market pressure is a great way to hire an accountability team and then never do layoffs, thus resulting in a larger staff and budget. That's exactly how NASA has operated for decades, and it's not working.
> It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues
I don't know what you mean by this but you sound like a very politically misinformed person. I'm guessing you use a lot of reddit?
"Reporting to NASA" and "being part of NASA" are two different situations. AURA, which runs STScI and thereby JWST, reports to more than just NASA. It's an international project, so the consortium of universities that comprise AURA reports to multiple agencies. The fact that you think this is fundamentally identical to internal NASA culture tells me you're not qualified to ascertain the level of my political information.
STScI is not working in a NASA building, they're operating out of Johns Hopkins. I've consulted for this organization a half dozen times, and I've consulted for NASA Goddard as well, and I am telling you they are not the same.
What I meant by the sound bite reference is that there is not any meaningful insight being brought to the work DOGE is doing. They're doing keyword searches and sorting by total contract spend and binning anything whose title would make a good Twitter post. We saw all this before from Ross Perot.
Queue "In the eyes on an angel" by Sarah McLachlan.
If major cuts essentially leave a skeleton crew, or no crew, for an extended period of time would later reinvestment be able to put the observatories back to use with only lost time? Or do these things need constant remote maintenance to stay operational?
My experience on NASA projects leads me to believe they could cut 20% of staff and have things run smoother, since fewer people would be bored, standing in the way looking for things to do.
QED the appropriate solution if you don't want to ride the collapse into a dystopian horrorscape cum shithole,
is to figure out what direct action you and your closest circles need to do for - personal survival - community survival and hopefully - national survival
where the latter is going to obviously mean some real, literal effort, short term, to reverse the soft coup that is going down.
Doesn't matter if these people were voted in; they can never be voted out and the sooner they are taken out of power by whatever means avail, the better.
Think on the scale of national strike and national shutdown.
Nothing short of that is going to save what generations built.