A Perfect Storm: Brutal NASA Science Cuts
Keith’s note: people have been talking about cuts to NASA – specifically science and most specifically Earth/Climate science for a while. It stems back too the overt anti-science statements and plans made in the Project 2025 effort. Now, Ars Technical has pulled that all together with the actual budget passback document as a guide. So there it is folks. Now we have numbers. Even if Congress and the White House pull some of this back, NASA’s science portfolio will be gutted and the impact will last for a very long time. And this affects more than just the science crowd. Fewer science missions means fewer launches and that directly affects the KSC civil servant and contractor workforce. The same goes for fewer payloads since the NASA centers and allied research institutions that build and operate payloads will be hit hard too. As science starts to dry up, the need for future commercial space stations will start to fade since the science they are supposed to be doing will be gone. Add in congressional intent to keep ISS operational until 2030, and the commercial space station thing will need to find all of its money elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Big Aerospace firms are uninterested in any of the personnel things – unless it affects their bottom line. Even then they remain mostly silent. Cuts like this assure that when it comes to space science NASA will NOT “make space great again”. So let’s “Embrace The Challenge”, as Janet Petro still says.
7 responses to “A Perfect Storm: Brutal NASA Science Cuts”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The first Trump Administration tried a similar budget, and Congress fought back, I am hopeful it will be a similar case this time around. Since the Senate passed the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2025 – MCC25339 last weekend, which looks pretty good and usually The House defers to them when it comes to NASA funding.
Plus the recent House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearings (on YouTube) look to be positive for NASA’s projects.
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/0B3F390C-72B0-4C41-B1BE-F5C8A886992C
NASA faired much better under Trump’s 1st term than they did during Biden’s term which was pretty stagnant the entire 4 years hovering around $25Bil each year. Do people not care that Ted Cruz, a very respected Republican, is a champion for NASA. I think that helps NASA a lot.
🤡
For a significant part of the US population, characterizing Ted Cruz as “respected” would be a stretch. He certainly is a strong advocate for the manned spaceflight portion of NASA’ s budget. He has questioned why NASA does earth science at all ( even though I think it is in the original charter). I find it sad that a space telescope that is apparently on schedule and on budget may get cancelled when SLS may go relatively unscathed.
“NASA faired much better under Trump’s 1st term than they did during Biden’s term which was pretty stagnant the entire 4 years hovering around $25Bil each year.”
You say that seemingly in defense of the administration, yet this very article is discussing a proposed 5 billion dollar budget cut. If anything, all that means is Congress is more friendly to NASA then the last couple of administrations. And that will be driven by which centers are in their state. Ted Cruz is friendly to NASA because he has JSC – of course that’s the seat of the manned spaceflight programs and the president’s budget targets science for cuts (including shuttering Goddard in blue Maryland).
And this administration has also made it clear they want unilateral authority over federal spending in all forms and they’ve managed to close departments and cancel programs by fiat, so whether or not Congress would approve this budget may end up moot.
But a $1 trillion defense budge? Who are we fighting? The Romulans?
I’m also hanging onto this little ray of hope: H.R.2210 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): Saving NASA’s Workforce Act
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2210/text/ih?overview=closed&format=xml