Trump’s NASA budget cuts and rejection of Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator signal a very bright future for American space
To most Americans interested in space exploration, my headline above must seem extremely counter-intuitive. For decades Americans have seen NASA as our space program, with any cuts at NASA seen as hindering that effort. Similarly, Isaacman, a businessman and private astronaut who has personally paid for two flights in space, had initially been nominated by Trump to become NASA administrator expressly because of that commercial space background. For Trump to reject such a person now seems at the surface incredibly damaging to NASA’s recent effort to work with the private sector.
All of that seems true, but it really is not. Both of these actions by Trump are simply what may be the last acts in the major change that has been engulfing the American space industry now for the past decade.
Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk in September 2024
First, let’s consider Isaacman. Before Trump had nominated him for NASA administrator, he had been a free American doing exactly what he wanted to do. As a very wealthy and successful businessman, he had decided to use that wealth to not only fly in space — fulfilling a personal dream — but to also use those flights to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s hospital, whose work he considered priceless and wanted supported. He ended up flying two space missions, becoming the first private citizen to do a spacewalk, while also raising more than $200 million for St. Jude’s.
Isaacman’s second flight was also the first in what he hoped would be his own long term manned space program, which he dubbed Polaris. The first mission did this spacewalk from a SpaceX capsule. The second would hopefully do a repair mission to Hubble, or if rejected by NASA some other work in orbit. And the third would fly in SpaceX’s Starship around the Moon.
As this program was funded entirely by Isaacman and used no government funds, it was generally free from criticism. If anything, Americans hailed it as ambitious and courageous. He was following his own American dream, and doing it on his own dime.
This history however made him appear on the surface to be a perfect choice for NASA administrator under Trump, especially in a time where America’s space effort is shifting more and more to the private sector.
Everything changed however once Trump nominated him. He had to suspend his private Polaris program. He had to kow-tow to politicians, telling them what they wanted to hear. And he was no longer his own boss.
As a government nominee Isaacman was now subject to extensive criticism and pressure from across the political spectrum. Furthermore, his personal political leanings now became an issue. It appeared he tended to lean left. He had donated to Democrats. His companies had enthusiastically embraced DEI racial quotas. And it appeared more and more during the confirmation process this spring that he opposed the deep cuts at NASA that Trump was proposing.
Politics is a poison. As power is its main coinage, it forces those who participate in it to play games for power. Quid pro quo becomes the rule. Truth must take a back seat. What you actually believe must always be sacrificed to the faction you have agreed to join.
Apparently, Isaacman and Trump found themselves at loggerheads. Though Isaacman appeared to play the game during Senate hearings, his apparent political differences with Trump made him for Trump increasingly a poor choice. The result was the decision this past weekend to withdraw Isaacman’s name for NASA administrator.
Most of the space community and the press immediately saw this as a disaster. My take is completely the opposite. First, during the nomination process Isaacman more and more seemed the wrong man for this job. As administrator it appeared he would end up fighting Trump over cuts when he should instead be finding the right way to make those cuts happen. This situation would not be good for either man or the agency.
Second, Isaacman is now once again a free man. He no longer has to cater to the political opinions of others. Nor does he have to pander to senators and Trump about what he believes. Instead, he can resume his own private space program, going where no man has gone before while also continuing his charitable work for St. Jude’s.
To my mind, I suspect Isaacman breathed a deep sigh of relief when Trump pulled his nomination.
Why cutting NASA’s budget makes sense
Next we have Trump’s proposed significant NASA budget cuts, as outlined in the graphic below. All told Trump wishes to cut $6 billion from that budget, about 24%.
As I noted when these cuts were first announced in early May, the changes to the manned part of NASA’s budget make great sense. Trump is getting rid of NASA projects that cost too much and accomplish little (SLS, Orion, Gateway) and shifting money to more effective commercial manned products. And despite the overall reduction in budget, in this area Trump is increasing spending.
The cuts to NASA’s science programs at first seem very painful, but a more objective look will see that this is not so. Many of these programs, especially in the climate field, have increasingly been less valuable or cost effective, producing results that are often questionably, often trivial, and many times poisoned by politics. Similar, the money spent in aeronautics and education has for decades been mostly nothing more than pork and of little use.
The time has come for a reckoning. The federal budget is out of control, and to get that annual deficit reduced and eliminated every single federal agency must play a part. All the Trump budget tries to do is parse out NASA’s contribution in the best way possible. By focusing on funding manned space linked to private enterprise, the hope is that these endeavors would help fuel funding in many other areas, including science research.
The bottom line
Both Isaacman’s withdrawal and Trump’s cuts to NASA’s budget however signal a much more fundamental shift that we all should celebrate. NASA — and the government — is simply becoming irrelevant to the future of space exploration.
You see, Isaacman’s private space program is not the only one coming out of the American private sector. SpaceX under Elon Musk intends to colonize Mars, and it is going to do using no government funds. Instead, the earnings the company is making from Starlink will pay for the entire program.
Similarly, Rocket Lab is funding its own mission to Venus, partly because its founder Peter Beck likes the idea and partly to highlight the company’s capabilities and products in the most spectacular way possible.
Four private space stations are presently being designed and built. One of those proposed stations is being built by Axiom, which has in the meantime been also flying commercial manned missions to ISS, with paying passengers. Its next mission, AX-4 and set to launch later this week, will take passengers from three different nations, India, Hungary, and Poland. The company has already signed additional contracts with Egypt and the Czech Republic.
Axiom is essentially proving that there is money to be made by American space companies, providing service to the international community.
Another space station company, Vast, is building on its own dime a small space station called Haven-1.
All four proposed space stations are vying for a big NASA contract to build their full stations. And in this area, Trump is not only not cutting the budget but increasing it over the next five years, with the long term goal of making the space stations that are built profitable and thus independent of government funding.
Freedom always enlightens everything!
The point is that there is no longer any reason to give NASA a big budget in order for America to explore space. By focusing NASA’s spending more wisely to encourage private enterprise, while also eliminating spending that is government focused, the agency will do more to promote the American space effort than it has ever done. Moreover, if private enterprise (made up of American citizens) is doing all the work, why give NASA a big budget? There is no reason.
Thus to me, Isaacman’s forced shift from government service to private enterprise this week signals in the coming decade the rise of a strong, competitive, and profitable American space industry doing all kinds of things in space. And it will be doing it under the basic American concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. NASA and the government will become increasingly unimportant, and Trump’s budget cuts this year merely illustrate this change.
One last thought. While the mainstream press continues to push the old and very tired line that these spending cuts at NASA will “destroy” American science, the American people clearly think differently. There is no strong uprising to save NASA here. The public clearly wants space exploration (just witness its enthusiastic interest in the achievements of private space in the past decade), but it has never been enthused about using tax dollars to do it.
The United States is simply going back to its roots. Instead of pushing a government-run Soviet-style top-down “space program” — as we have sadly done since the 1960s — we are now transitioning back to a chaotic free industry eager to explore the solar system for both fun and profit and in its own way.
It is time to celebrate. Let freedom ring!
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I don’t like all of what Trump does. I hate how he seems to have little respect for others except when it obviously works to his advantage. However, is not afraid to let the public know what his priorities are. More importantly, he lets us know what is NOT a priority. He actually attacks programs he does not like and is effective in doing so. He doesn’t use our money to try and please everyone. If someone doesn’t like what he does, he just says “tough”. He makes them go to congress or the courts. He doesn’t just knuckle over to avoid a fight. He actually makes decisions. That is very refreshing after the last four years.
Cloudy: I agree with your description of Trump whole-heartedly. However, his behavior was not the point of my essay. My essay was instead attempting to see how Trump’s actions here might impact the future.
Cloudy’s opinion is very widely echoed by the international community. As long as the US has the multi-trillion dollar marketplace for the world, he carries a big stick. Otherwise, not so much.
I agree. NASA will still have some role to play, but it’s day is over (as much as I love their legacy). The future is, and always was going to be, commercial. And perhaps we are now there. Fan boys will resist. People who want to go to the stars will not. And EVERYTHING needs to be cut. We are dangerously in debt.
“Both Isaacman’s withdrawal and Trump’s cuts to NASA’s budget however signal a much more fundamental shift that we all should celebrate. NASA — and the government — is simply becoming irrelevant to the future of space exploration.” [emphasis in original]
NASA could remain relevant by becoming a resource for space companies in the same way that the NACA was a resource for aviation companies. NASA has various test and experimental facilities that are currently being used by space companies, especially startups and other smaller companies.
NASA could also continue funding some science that would not otherwise be funded by individuals, universities, companies, or other organizations. Astronomy satellites is a good example. Individuals have, in the past, financed observatories, which seem to last more than a century. Space-based astronomy satellites tend to have a more limited lifespan, often limited by their solar array power sources, which tend to last only a couple of decades or so.
Neither of my proposed directions for NASA need a large budget, and (as already happens) some of the funding can come from the companies that rent NASA’s facilities.
“The public clearly wants space exploration (just witness its enthusiastic interest in the achievements of private space in the past decade), but it has never been enthused about using tax dollars to do it.”
For the American public, this is the best of both worlds. They get space exploration, but it is not the taxpayer paying for it.
“we are now transitioning back to a chaotic free industry eager to explore the solar system for both fun and profit and in its own way.”
It may seem chaotic to someone who believes that their should be an overall plan or that their should be an “invisible hand” guiding the direction that progress should take, but the reality is that the market place will use profits to bring incentives for the directions that the customers want the companies to develop. The free market capitalist model of economics and innovation has been the American way for four hundred years, and it brought us from a literal backwoods village to a powerhouse nation whose businesses lead the way into space through the American style bottom-up leadership.
___________________
Cloudy,
The Democrat Party does the same thing. They say “tough,” too, to anyone who does not like what they do. This is how we ended up with the mess that they left us this past year, and it is how we ended up with a smaller mess in 1981. So, yes, it is refreshing that it is now going in the right direction, for once.
NASA would still be burning $1.5 billion a month. Isaacman is the only person I had confidence in spending it efficiently within congressional constraints. Absent Isaacman, I see no need for NASA. None of the NASA projects will have any bearing on space exploration or benefit Americans in general; just spending to sustain jobs. Your post suggests a positive though I expect NASA will
(continue to) be an impediment to commercial space if only to justify NASA’s existence. With NASA / US government impeding US commercial space efforts, China will produce all the successes.
This seems to be an absurd amount of copium. To be sure, Isaacman will be free to do the rest of the Polaris missions. On the other hand, NASA really could have used his business acumen and vision to become a 21st Century space powerhouse that supports commercial space. That opportunity has been blown up.
I agree with the basics of the article but I do have a question:
What is the mechanism by which projects like JWST, GRACE-Roman, Chandra etc get proposed, built, and operated?
One thing NASA does is run a Decadal Review, in which scientists gather and decide where the focus should be in astronomical/astrophysical research. And then NASA took their findings and funded/flew what it could.
NASA, or someone else, could still run the Decadals that’s small money. But once the scientists point the way, what is the mechanism by which technology research is funded and metal gets bent to build and fly these things? And what is the mechanism to fund the ground support necessary for these missions?
DJ, as long as Euroweenies are incapable of defending themselves, we’ll have all the sticks we need.
NASA is almost 70 years old. It was founded to create the American space program – not necessarily to become the American space industry.
Thanks to scientific and technological development funded by NASA the U.S. now has a growing private sector space industry. I agree that’s the fundamental change. That industry is ready to leave the nest. Which still leaves a role for the nest. Just a smaller and perhaps shrinking role.
Saville: The Decadal Surveys, begun by the astronomical community in the 1960s, were originally run by the astronomers, intended to influence NASA. In more recent decades NASA has been more closely involved but it has still been a community driven activity.
Either way, the technique worked so well that instead of guiding NASA in choosing space astronomical projects, NASA began treating the surveys as orders. This has been a mistake, resulting in big boondoggles such as Webb and Roman.
The astronomers should continue to do these decadal surveys, but they should use them to convince private philanthropists to pay for such work — as was done routinely prior to WWII.
Mark Whittington: You very well could be right, that Isaacman’s business experience would have been very good for getting NASA straightened out. At the same time, if he disagreed with Trump’s proposed cuts then there might have been real problems getting anything done.
All in all, I think the benefits of him NOT being administrator out weigh the costs. In my humble opinion. :)
Mark Whittington. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. You and people like Rand Simberg, Robert Oler, Mark Ruckman used to fascinate me with your knowledgeable comments on the CompuServe space forum back in the 1990s.
Axiom Space flying manned missions to the ISS??
Yeah, in a SpaceX DRAGON.
Kind of an important point there.
Jimmy Doolittle: Yup, you are right. And it simply underlines my point. There are TWO American space companies making money on these flights.
I think ultimately Jared Isaacman is going to be a happier man not having to be NASA Administrator than he would have been had he gotten the job. But however it happened, it’s a moot point now.
The budget, however, remains a live question, since it isn’t “real” until Congress actually approves an appropriations bill — and once it does, the effects of that will be felt for a long time to come.
And what remains unclear about it is just what is ultimately intended by it. Is it the first step toward a radical restructuring of NASA and how it does science? Is it the opening bid in negotiations with Congress which it knows it won’t completely win? Or a mix of both? I for one would like to know just what the administration really intends by this.
One thing in particular that strikes me is just how many active science missions, both in deep space and in earth orbit, are planned for termination. There are dozens of such missions planned for this swing of the axe, missions like Juno, New Horizons, MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, Euclid, LISA, Chandra, Fermi, Themis, XRISM, Ibex, and so on. On the one hand, most of these are in extended mission status, meaning they have fulfilled the missions they were designed for and then some; but on the other hand, this also means their ongoing costs are rather small, too. Juno, for example, had an operational budget of just $28.4 million last year. The vehicles are already out there, in place, returning useful data, and the money and effort has been spent already getting them there.
If your minor premise is that the country has a $36 trillion national debt and everyone and everything must take their haircut, that’s certainly at least an argument, even if there’s little hair to be cut on these missions. But I would like to hear more from the administration on just what its rationale is, and what the broader vision is for how this will tie into how it wants NASA to do its mission going forward.
Richard M: I am beginning to do a deep dive into Trump’s proposed cuts at NASA. While overall it attempts a rational but hard approach to trimming the agency, there are areas where the White House is being penny wise and pound foolish, especially when it comes to some of the missions already in space. More later this week.
There are other potential leaders for NASA who have both business and space expertise.
Innovation can include private sector adoption of completed NASA projects that have functional space craft already in position. How about Elon, Besos, Isaacman or a University adopting Juno? $28 million is spare change for some people. New ideas for what they want to explore?
Hi Bob,
Yeah, I mean….if there is a plan to put in place a more commercial model for science mission procurement *going forward*, it would make little sense to keep future missions in the early stages of development (MSR, DAVINCI+, Veritas, etc.) I can totally grok that. Well, that, and a mission like MSR just needs to die, period…
But while I did not use the phrase, I also increasingly think that “penny-wise and pound foolish” could be a fair characterization of pole-axing a number of these ongoing missions. New Horizons, the only active probe in the Kuiper Belt now, costs….only $9 million this year, which has to be less than NASA spends on coffee. There could be a case for some of these missions, due to the state of the probe or the data being returned, but the ones I am more familiar with….it is harder to make that case. You are getting a lot of data you would not get otherwise, and you are spending very little to get it…
But hey, we all know Congress won’t go along with all of these cancellations. We just don’t know exactly which ones yet.
Richard M: I’ve now completed a first pass through the entire 463 page 2026 NASA budget proposal. Quite interesting, and as usual, not the disaster pushed by the establishment science community in league with the propaganda press. More tomorrow.
Cutting something already in space just seems foolish, though I think New Horizons and Voyager have seen all they can see and ownership transferred to another party.
For other probes, perhaps a Cassini swan dive is in order. Service life traded for a high risk low altitude scan on the way down.