Congressional Support for Space Force and Moon 2024 Is Hard To Find
The current status of support for #Moon2024 and #SpaceForce as far as Congress is concerned @SciGuySpace @lorengrush @kchangnyt
Just sayin' pic.twitter.com/QGdTcIIyND
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 22, 2019
Can Trump Put NASA Astronauts on the Moon by 2024? It’s Unlikely, NY Times
“Although he has not spoken to Mr. Trump about the revised moon program, Mr. Bridenstine said the president was keen on this goal. “It was by his direction that we do this,” he said. “Yet to be seen is whether this is a political priority the administration will make the effort to follow through on. Last year, the administration gave NASA a different, big task to accomplish by the end of 2024: ending direct federal financing of the International Space Station, one of NASA’s largest yearly expenditures. That proposal ran into strong opposition from Ted Cruz, a Republican Senator from Texas. Since then, NASA has made no significant announcements about how it plans to shift to commercial space stations that do not yet exist.”
Donald Trump is not getting his space money, Quartz
“Last week, the White House submitted a late funding request for an additional $1.6 billion in spending on a proposed Artemis moon program to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. Today, the House Appropriations committee left that request out of its spending plan for NASA and ignored many of the administration’s other space priorities. Without that funding, any hope of the accelerated mission to the moon touted by Vice President Mike Pence is likely to disappear. It was a similar story yesterday, when the committee rejected White House plans to consolidate military space activity into a new service called Space Force.”
These proposals cost money and the Trump Administration hasn’t made a case to the public that tax dollars are needed. If the administration has other tax dollars that are not needed, they should be given back to the taxpayers first. Then a case should be made as to whether they are needed for a return to the Moon or the creation of a sixth armed service.
I’m not sensing that the Space Force has a critical level of support in the current Congress, but that they want to wait a year or two and gather more information. It’ll still happen, but maybe not until 2021 or 2022.
In 2021, they can put Space Force and all the other dumb ideas by Trump to bed for good.
It was not Trump’s idea. He just glommed onto it. It’s been bounced around the Pentagon and Congress for awhile, and passed the House before Trump ever started talking about it.
If the need for a Space Force at this time had been carefully considered, with the positives and negatives weighed by an engaged, thoughtful president, then I’d be okay with it. But this was put into motion purely to be used as a Trump campaign talking point / fund raiser.
No bucks….ya’ll know the rest.
It seems Trump has made many enemies, even for many federal employees seeing proposed cuts in benefits, so not surprising there are many are keen to going with his program to return to the moon. Last time we went to the moon, a lot of politics was involved particularly giving many a piece of the action.
And just like that, things change. The Senate Armed Services Committee gave it the green light today.