Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

Summary

Like all sponsors of science programs, NASA has had its ups and downs. What makes it unique is that its achievements and failures almost always happen in public. Triumphs like the moon landings and the deep-space images from the Hubble and Webb space telescopes were great popular successes; the string of exploding rockets in its early days and the shuttle explosions cast lasting shadows over its work.But the agency may never have had to confront a challenge like the one it faces now: a Trump administration budget plan that would cut funding for NASA’s science programs by nearly 50% and its overall spending by about 24%. This is us metaphorically closing our eyes. — Casey Dreier, Planetary Society, on proposed NASA budget cuts The budget, according to insiders, was prepared without significant input from NASA itself. That’s not surprising, because the agency doesn’t have a formal leader. On May 31 Donald Trump abruptly pulled the nomination as NASA administrator of Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, space enthusiast, and two-time crew member on private space flights, apparently because of his ties to Elon Musk. The withdrawal came only days before a Senate confirmation vote on Isaacman’s appointment. While awaiting a new nominee, “NASA will continue to have unempowered leadership, not have a seat at the table for its own destiny and not be able to effectively fight for itself in this administration,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a leading research advocacy organization.Things haven’t been helped by the sudden breakup between Trump and Musk, whose SpaceX is a major contractor for NASA and the Department of Defense, the relationship with which is now in doubt. The cuts, Dreier says, reduce NASA’s budget to less than it has been, accounting for inflation, since the earliest days of Project Mercury in the early 1960s.Superficially, the budget cuts place heightened emphasis on “practical, quantitative,” even commercial applic...