But the cuts go far beyond that, to things that are less showy but with more direct effects on the lives of people. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, with microscopic effects on the bottom line, but with myriad small effects on our parks, our roads, even national security.
Space is the "charismatic mega fauna" of the budget, but the whole "ecosystem" is ravaged. It must be saved, but take it as an indicator of just how much damage has been done. Spare a thought and a word for the NIH, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Social Security administrators whose jobs are not glamorous but nonetheless critical to people who depend on them.
Those issues have their cheerleaders, so I see no reason to start with “that’s good, BUT”.
I really hate this trend of pretending people are supposed to care about A more than B and that, more than C. Let people champion the things they’re passionate about. Everyone is already suffering from compassion fatigue.
Not sure framing this in terms of sympathy for jobless bureaucrats is as effective as considering the impact on babies who will die of diseases in cancelled pipelines, ecosystems and fisheries that will collapse due to negligence or proud grandmas who will go hungry because SSA fucked up their cheques.
The rest of the cuts are around propulsion systems and mars science missions. The administration and some parts of NASA see the commercial segment becoming more developed and more capable and are hoping they will be able to fill the gap. This also accelerates the plan to retire the ISS and move to commercial orbital platforms.
Interestingly this budget does allocate $646 million more to exploration in 2025 than it did in 2024. Showing a shift in priorities from Earth based science missions to full manned missions returning to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
Alternatives: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-profit_space_age...
>There was very little government funding for any kind of biomedical research. The polio research was privately funded through the March of Dimes,” explained Randy Juhl, Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the School of Pharmacy.
https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/pittwire/features-articles/ann...
Which is why we live in a republic. (And since the Industrial Revolution and Battle of Jena, one twinned to a technocratic administrative state.)
The U.S. government just got red teamed by an extremely adversarial auditor in DOGE. They weren’t able to find almost any fraud (outside the DoD, which they didn’t touch). They found maybe tens of billions of spending they didn’t like out of a budget of trillions.
Also, we’re on a start-up board. Are you seriously arguing that every start-up, or even the median start-up, is less wasteful than the median century-old company?
To the extent there is documented inefficiency at NASA, it's in the way it manages its contractors for manned exploration. Its science budget is a paragon of institutional efficiency.
> It's not bottom up waste and fraud
Read the GAO report [1]. (Ctrl + F Bechtel.)
But for sake of argument, let's assume this is true. How does cutting the science budget while preserving SLS make sense?