Texas lawmakers now lobbying to move NASA headquarters to Houston
First it was Florida. Then it was Ohio. Now Texas lawmakers are lobbying the Trump administration to move NASA headquarters from Washington to Houston.
A coalition of Texas lawmakers is calling on President Donald Trump to relocate NASA’s headquarters to Houston when the office lease in Washington D.C. expires in 2028. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R- Woodville) are leading the charge to make Houston the new landing spot for NASA headquarters. Several other Texas representatives signed onto the letter Wednesday urging Trump to make this shift.
That politicians in three different states are lobbying in this manner tells us it is almost certain that NASA’s headquarters is leaving DC. More important, it tells us that the agency’s entire bureaucracy — including its many scattered centers nationwide — are going to go through a major shake-up, including major reductions and closures. It appears Trump has made the headquarters a plum that these politicians are chasing in order to get them to agree to major cuts elsewhere.
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First it was Florida. Then it was Ohio. Now Texas lawmakers are lobbying the Trump administration to move NASA headquarters from Washington to Houston.
A coalition of Texas lawmakers is calling on President Donald Trump to relocate NASA’s headquarters to Houston when the office lease in Washington D.C. expires in 2028. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R- Woodville) are leading the charge to make Houston the new landing spot for NASA headquarters. Several other Texas representatives signed onto the letter Wednesday urging Trump to make this shift.
That politicians in three different states are lobbying in this manner tells us it is almost certain that NASA’s headquarters is leaving DC. More important, it tells us that the agency’s entire bureaucracy — including its many scattered centers nationwide — are going to go through a major shake-up, including major reductions and closures. It appears Trump has made the headquarters a plum that these politicians are chasing in order to get them to agree to major cuts elsewhere.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Ohio seems a bit of a stretch. If J.D. Vance wasn’t VP and Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t running for Governor there, I don’t think anyone would be taking Ohio too seriously as a location for a future NASA HQ. That said, I’d take a move to Ohio over remaining in DC in a hot minute. Ohio at least has a logical place to put a NASA HQ – the Neil Armstrong Test Center (Plum Brook).
But both TX and FL have even more logical places to plop down a repotted NASA HQ. TX has JSC in Houston. FL has KSC.
As long as NASA HQ exits DC by 2028, I’m pretty much agnostic about where it fetches up.
SOOOOOeeee Here piggy piggy piggy. Pork time.
If NASA really wants to close a field center, my nomination would be JSC. If there is to be a future for manned spaceflight, the astronauts & support personnel should be located in close proximity to the launch site. JSC was established because JFK needed political support from LBJ, & does not have any major test facilities or other infrastructure that could not be moved elsewhere
wolfie,
Every NASA center has immovable facilities. In the case of JSC it’s the astronaut training infrastructure including the enormous Neutral Buoyancy pool. With more and more nations – especially Artemis Accords signatories – wanting to fly astronauts, such training facilities will be even more useful in future years than they are now. Once commercial LEO space stations and regular – and frequent – missions to the Moon are a thing a few years hence, it may even prove necessary to expand JSC’s training facilities rather than shut them down.
And that is without even considering the move of NASA HQ from DC. JSC is the most reasonable of extant NASA centers to host such a repotting. But KSC is also bidding for NASA HQ’s relocation. In the end, politics may dictate that each gets part of NASA’s current HQ functions. I could see what is now the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate moving to Houston while the Space Operations Mission Directorate moves to KSC. The remaining mission directorates could either be split between JSC and KSC or repotted to other NASA centers more aligned with their missions.
And then there is the matter of proximity to launch sites. The KSC-Canaveral complex will not be the only significant US astronaut launch facility going forward. Starbase will also be such even though not a NASA facility. Houston is closer to Starbase than it is to KSC-Canaveral.
All of this is not to say that there are no extant NASA centers that should not be closed. The top of my personal better-off-dead list is MSFC in Huntsville. SLS and Orion have no long-term future and NASA is never again going to be in the launch vehicle design business. That’s most of what Marshall does. It needs to be closed, radically downsized or radically repurposed.
Next on my list is Langley. Langley has immovable infrastructure – wind tunnels and such – but they are all older and smaller than those at Ames. And the entire physical plant at Langley is crumbling away from lack of maintenance. I think a fork needs to be stuck in it.
Third on my list is Goddard. The entire Science Mission Directorate needs an enema, but Goddard is responsible for the absurd cost and schedule overruns of the JWST. JPL has its own profligacy and incompetence problems as well – Mars Sample Return being front and center – and Psyche also being a recent bad memory. The entire SMD, frankly, needs a comprehensive spanking. And we certainly do not need two spendthrift space probe shops going forward. I’m indifferent as to whether it’s JPL or Goddard that gets canned, but JPL isn’t, technically, a NASA center and Goddard is, so it should be less complicated to shut down Goddard. Whichever one goes, the survivor should get a top-to-bottom management replacement at a minimum.
There are certainly other trims and tucks that need to be made to NASA, but the preceding list is my Big Three.