Trump administration seeks to slash NASA's budget by 50% | Hacker News Reader

Trump administration seeks to slash NASA's budget by 50%

arstechnica.com

23 pointspmags6 comments

Guessing the U.S. will be watching from the sidelines then as China essentially colonizes the Moon.

That may be a consequence of this, but the article only talks about cuts to science missions. It’s a guess where they want to trim the 50% from, but my money is on climate science:

> This spending was broken down into approximately $2.7 billion for planetary science, $2.2 billion for Earth science, $1.5 billion for astrophysics, and $800 million for heliophysics.

It seems like another veiled attack on left-leaning states, since those are where most of the science centers are located.

> Moreover, a lot of NASA's key science centers are located in Democrat-leaning states such as California, Maryland, and New York, which do not hold power in Congress.

Page 85 of the linked “shadow” budget[1] also supports Artemis, so probably not on the chopping block.

[1] https://americarenewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Budge...

Yeah, wondering about that though. Can they really micro-manage where NASA's funding cut is to be applied? Because if left to NASA they may well keep the science projects, cut Artemis.

Yes, they can, and do. Appropriations bills are extremely detailed. Each program has to be separately authorized. The agencies and departments have very little flexibility to move money around according to their own priorities.

There's a circular dependence. Congress has to pass the authorization bills, but it starts with the President's budget request, which in turn is authored by the separate agencies. Congress routinely declares the President's budget "dead on arrival" and sets about writing its own, which usually starts from the last year's budget. In reality there's a lot of jockeying, with the individual department meeting with individual Congressmen and committees to stress their priorities.

At least, they used to. I have no idea what happens now.

> It’s a guess where they want to trim the 50% from, but my money is on climate science

From the article:

> Even if NASA's Earth science budget were taken to zero, cutting the overall science budget in half would still dramatically reduce funding in planetary science as well as other research areas. Scientists told Ars that NASA would be forced to make difficult decisions, likely including shutting off extended missions such as the Voyager and Curiosity probes on Mars, and possibly even the Hubble Space Telescope. It might be possible to save missions in later stages of development, such as the Dragonfly probe to Saturn's moon Titan, and the NEO Surveyor mission to search for hazardous asteroids. But it would be impossible to start meaningful new missions to explore the Solar System, potentially setting back planetary exploration a decade.

"as SpaceX essentially colonizes the moon"

FIFY

This has nothing to do with budget cuts, and everything with the rise of technocratic populism

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