Maybe it finally is time we actually made these major budget cuts at NASA
This past weekend the pro-government propaganda press has been in an outraged uproar concerning unconfirmed rumors and anonymous reports that the Trump administration is considering major cuts to NASA’s many science divisions and projects, cuts so large that several space missions, such as Mars Sample Return and the Roman Space Telescope, would have to be canceled. Here are just a few examples, with the first few the ones that broke the story:
- Ars Technica: Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA
- Washington Post: Massive cuts to NASA science proposed in early White House budget plan
- Space News: White House proposal would slash NASA science budget and cancel major missions
- SpacePolicyOnline: Isaacman’s “Golden Age of Science & Discovery” on Shaky Ground
- Politico: Musk calls Trump’s looming NASA cuts ‘troubling’
- The Planetary Society: Warns of dark age for space science under reported NASA budget cuts
- The London Times: Proposed Nasa budget cuts would plunge agency ‘into a dark age’
Of this list, the Politico story is the most amusing. Suddenly this leftwing news outlet loves Musk again, since he is expressing opposition to these cuts. Just days before he was the devil incarnate because of his partnership with Trump in cutting government waste. Now that he might oppose these NASA budget cuts will lefties start buying Teslas again? Who knows? The depth of their thinking is often quite shallow and divorced from rationality.
As is typical of the propaganda press, all these stories focused on quoting only those opposed to the cuts, from Democrats in Congress to leftist activist organizations. Very few offered any alternative points of view. These reports were thus typical of the propaganda press and the Washington swamp whenever anyone proposes any cuts to any government program: We are all gonna die! Civilization is going to end! Only evil people would dare propose such ideas!
The truth is that there are many ample and rational reasons to consider major budget cuts to most of NASA programs. Like the rest of our bloated federal government, NASA is no longer the trim efficient government agency it was in the 1960s.
First, let’s review the two projects th with cancellation that have gotten the most play in these stories, Mars Sample Return (MSR) and the Roman Space Telescope. In the first case the entire design of MSR has been a mess from day one. It is billions over budget and behind schedule — and has still not even figured out a plan for getting the samples back from Mars. Letting NASA continue this disaster is like throwing good money after bad.
Moreover, cancelling this project in its entirety now doesn’t mean a sample return mission still couldn’t happen. It just means that a complete reboot would occur. Such a fresh start might even make possible a better plan.
As for the Roman Space Telescope, it might seem tragic to cancel it now, when it is almost completed and scheduled for launch in 2027. Yet this project is the best example of the budget corruption at NASA. Around 2010 the astronomical community was putting together its proposals for NASA’s astronomy projects for the decade of 2010-2020. A committee was formed which then solicited proposals from the astronomers. Hundreds were submitted. None included the Roman Space Telescope, though several offered smaller less expensive variations.
The committee members however decided they wanted Roman, so when they released their report they used their position of power to propose it, ignoring the hundreds of ideas submitted to them. Initially dubbed WFIRST, Roman was to be another flagship giant space telescope like the Webb Space Telescope that would take more than a decade to build and funnel billions of dollars into the space telescope industry. Like Webb, Roman’s first budget estimate was relatively low, $2 billion. And like Webb, that number has ballooned to more than $3 billion, with some risk of further overages.
None of this is meant to say that Roman won’t do good research. My point is that it exists not because the astronomy community wanted it or even thought it should be a priority, but because it was a pet project idea of the handful of insiders on that committee, and they forced it on everyone else.
This is not how such projects should be born. And any project born in this manner is certainly open to criticism and cancellation.
As for the many other cuts at NASA, we should not assume they will result in the end of new space research. NASA’s science divisions have a lot of entrenched bureaucracy that does no research at all but imposes its own leftist political agenda on that research. Slashing those budgets and those bureaucracy so that any remaining money goes directly to researchers as grants might actually increase the amount of research done. It is also likely that the research will be better, because it will no longer be under political pressure by the bureaucracy to produce the results that bureaucracy wants.
Are we robots or do we have a brain for thinking?
On a more general note, only a decade ago NASA’s budget was about $18 billion. Today it is more than $25 billion, with planned increases bringing it to $27 billion in the next few years. There is thus plenty of room for budget trimming. More important, such trims must be contemplated in the context of the federal debt and annual deficit. We simply cannot continue making believe money grows on trees. It does not, and if we don’t regain control over the federal budget at some point — looming sooner and sooner as time passes — disaster, bankruptcy, and collapse are certain to happen.
And when a collapse occurs, there will no longer be any money for NASA or space science. Other priorities, such as survival, will force the end of such work. And it might take decades for the nation to recover enough to resume such luxuries.
Better to face the problem now and fix it, when we have the freedom and flexibility to do so with the least harm.
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“here is thus plenty of room for budget trimming. More important, such trims must be contemplated in the context of the federal debt and annual deficit. We simply cannot continue making believe money grows on trees.”
THIS!
While it is tragic that programs are being cut, the government needs to stop spending. And that means both sides. “Look all these cuts saved a trillion dollars. Let’s have a tax cut!” just spends imaginary money in a different way.
Joe says: “While it is tragic that programs are being cut, the government needs to stop spending. And that means both sides. “Look all these cuts saved a trillion dollars. Let’s have a tax cut!” just spends imaginary money in a different way.”
Respectfully disagree. Tax cuts never cost $$$. Rather, they make or create $$$. The notion that tax cuts cost $$$ is little more than democrat anti-tax cut propaganda that sounds good but has never, ever happened. Cheers –
No, the Dubya Bush tax cuts at best got you $1.02 return–or a loss.
Each dollar spent on NASA got you a seven-to-one return.
So that’s what they cut?
This isn’t welfare going to some lothario’s side-babies by several different women–these are cuts to America’s exceptionalism.
This is going to hurt the brand.
The DNC hurt themselves by overreach.
This can happen to the GOP as well.
Actually, tax cuts NEVER cost money. Only government spending costs money.
We must end the presumption that OUR money is actually the property of the government, and that our keeping ANY percentage of it is something for which we should be grateful.
Across the board, NASA included, the federal government has proven wasteful and irresponsible with OUR money. This must change, and the Trump administration is rightly working to effect such a change.
What are total expenditures of all space-faring projects going on? In the 1960s, it was pretty much only NASA spending somebody’s seed money – i.e. MY MONEY. Now, the list of launching company’s and capsule company’s budgets far exceeds that of NASA, with their own money as seed money. Due to this blossoming of free enterprise capitalism, we are in the 1900-era of autos – steam, electric, gasoline, you pick. Many companies bloomed, and died off. A few, or none, remained. Yet here we are, trying to restrict auto production to having no exhaust products of any kind.
Perhaps the same situation will bear out a hundred years from now. We may have so many GPS- or telecom- satellites that they’ll have to be restricted to only small-fusion-powered or m-a-m – battery powered ones. m-a-m = matter-anti-matter for those of you not in the know. Why is the future so hard to predict? Of course, my own predictions are just shy of 95% accurate. For past events.
If you are looking for “good cuts in spending”, why did everyone seem to think it was a fine idea to NOT hire 85,000 IRS agents, as Slo-Joe wanted? (That number I thought was a lot excessive, but typically audits bring in 2 to 5 times the “cost” of the IRS agents. My own figures, not someone else’s.) That should be a good thing.
Yet, even the Wash Post 6/14/23 berated Congress’s cutting IRS budget because audits return 12 times the cost (their figures, not mine). And here I always figured the Post was liberal!!
NASA has had a pretty good ride, funding wise, over the last two administrations, but the hour is late and the guests are overstaying their welcome.
Or so it seems. If the budget has surged in nominal dollars over the last decade, COVID and Bidenflation ate up a lot of it. FY2015 was actually $23,891 in current dollars; FY 2025 is $24,875. Is this more like that U2 song, running to stand still?
But as for our two big ticket items on the chopping block: I think the thing with WFIRST/Roman is not so much how it came to be on the 2010 Astrophysics Decadal Report (which actually was not far removed from the recommendations), but how it grew after that. When the midterm Decadal review came ’round in 2016, astronomers were surprised at how it had inflated. As Jacqueline Hewitt, a professor of physics at MIT who chaired that midterm assessment, put it, “I, for one, was quite surprised that the WFIRST that appeared before this committee was very different from the one that was proposed by Astro2010,” she said of the discussion of WFIRST by her committee. “WFIRST took a lot of our time just getting our heads around how this mission would respond to the science, what all these changes would actually mean.” https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3435/1
But it could be argued that this is water under the bridge, however smelly it might be. I think the differences between Roman and Mars Sample Return come down to this: 1) Roman is, as you say, nearly complete now, and little money will be saved by axing it now, whereas MSR exists only on paper (er, several papers); and 2) the science customer base for Roman is simply going to be far bigger than for MSR. Call it a Frankenscope if you like, but from everything I have heard it is going to be as oversubscribed for time as JWST and Hubble are now. Whereas however valuable those samples from Jezero Crater might be, strictly speaking, there’s just a much smaller pool of scientists and facilities that can or will work with ’em. It’s a fascinating planet, one we hope to colonize soon, but it is just one planet. Roman is going to be scanning much of the universe.
I have been in favor of euthanizing Mars Sample Return for some time now, and that feeling is only stronger now. It’s not that I don’t value getting curated bits of Mars back to Earth geology labs, but I agree with you that it’s time to step back and really rethink how that might happen, and how it might be done more cost effectively. Because right now, even the “cheap” option NASA identified in the independent review still threatens to swallow up a vast chunk of the planetary science budget for the rest of this decade. We just can’t go on like this.
As a reader of astronomical literature, I am in full agreement that “Mars Sample Return” is a boondoggle. And I doubt Isaacman’s fortitude to tell that to Congress.
This is me sweetening the medicine I need to deliver: astronomers today do want the Grace Roman telescope. I am constantly stumbling across “avenues for future research” codas in the “Discussion” section that mention how this telescope should be able to fine-tune the results, or even image a planet directly. This will also be able to detect smaller transits.
Robert Observes:
“We simply cannot continue making believe money grows on trees. It does not, and if we don’t regain control over the federal budget at some point — looming sooner and sooner as time passes — disaster, bankruptcy, and collapse are certain to happen.
And when a collapse occurs, there will no longer be any money for NASA or space science. Other priorities, such as survival, will force the end of such work.”
Am I the only person who read this part, or does everyone else believe that this simply “can’t happen” because… Well, because it would be *inconvenient and unhappy* if it did. Nope, we’ll go on believing that money DOES grow on trees, that debts (and the compounding interest on them) DON’T have to be repaid, and history provides NO examples of governments falling and civilizations collapsing back into ignorance and poverty. Again, if you think that it can’t happen here — we’re “special,” etc. — try doing a little reading, beginning with Jared Diamond’s book. Yeah, he may be off in a few details, but there are just too many examples throughout human history to simply shrug it off and pretend that it can’t happen to us. God, no.
Having said this, however, I would suggest — and am urging Robert to write more along these lines — that a successful private sector-based space industry that transforms this country into a true space faring nation may be just the spark that reignites American greatness. Likewise, it might help rekindle an economy (based on once again creating *actual things of value* as opposed to churning out more imaginary paper profits on Wall Street) that enables us to pay our debts and retain a currency that is actually worth something.
By analogy, was the aviation industry — aside from the initial role of an airmail subsidy — created by the government picking winners and losers, or was its development driven by marker forces and what its customers, including the military, wanted?
David — I’ll bet that the Chinese Comrades would be more than happy to pick up the stockpiled Mars samples that we are collecting, and based on what they have done so far on the moon, I’d say that they are getting pretty good at it. Plus in the PRC, money still grows on trees — so long as the government says that it does — and they can afford such expensive adventures.
On the other hand, per the debacle in the Wuhan lab, I’m not sure that we’d want them handling such material.
Never mind.
I don’t think we should fund space, the same way we are doing now. I think we should have prizes, purchasing launch flights, renting out base facilities, and recognizing land claims.
That would be a big boost for private industry in space. We can create an Earth to Moon transportation industry, a lunar rental industry, and a space manufacturing industry. Not just for the Moon, but for the whole solar system.
Mars Sample Return realistic timelines coincide nicely with Starship probable (perhaps optimistic) arrival times.
Better bang for buck to send an astronaut or six along with the SpaceX crew to collect samples and load them on a return Starship, and maybe stay on to help set up the Mars permanent base.
For that matter, it’d be an even more clever use of bucks to also fill a Starship with lab equipment and do analysis there. Boots on the ground is an order of magnitude higher value than any return proposal.
When you think about it fresh, it actually seems strange that NASA manages space telescopes. Does it manage Earth based telescopes? No. Does it design and manage the launch services? Not any more. Do we need 10k NASA emloyees in an ultra expense part Maryland?
Milt:
In order to collect those bagged samples, the Chinese would have to land very close to them. Mars is a big planet, and there’s lots of rocks out there.
If they’re interested in rocks and returning them, it would be far easier and cheaper to collect their own rocks and return those. Returning the rocks collected by NASA would be a pure political game.
MSR seems to me like some of the projects I’ve been involved with, where there’s goals A, B, and C. C is the most difficult, so the project planners just assume C will happen. That way, it’s not in their budget and so the whole thing looks less expensive and more plausible that it will work.
If C is “move the existing stuff over to the new process” (or with MSR, “bring the rocks to where we can use them”) then it’s the most important part and the whole thing won’t work without it…
Rand Simberg reflects with a point I had not thought about: “It’s inappropriate for OMB to propose a NASA budget ahead of the confirmation of a NASA administrator who has been named for months. I wouldn’t put up with it if I were president. I personally consider OMB’s NASA budget proposal DOA, and I hope that Trump does as well.”
https://x.com/Rand_Simberg/status/1911828467404165152
It’s a good point. Passbacks on agency budgets should be held until the agencies have permanent heads in place, able to have input into all stages of the budget process for their agencies. If you are going to hold the head of an agency responsible for the results of his or her agency, they need to be able to exercise authority for the acts that create those results.
David,
Yeah. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that now.
There are real concerns about how the process of how Roman was designed unfolded. But there’s clearly going to be heavy demand for time on the telescope. It’s vastly more capable than Hubble.
It is also gratifying that NASA is instituting a Guest Observer program for Roman. Not just the Usual Suspects will get time on it.
That’s Trump: He lowballs the suckers, they panic, and eventually Trump gets what he wanted in the first place, a fraction of what he asked for in the beginning. I fail to understand why people don’t see this.
On the other hand, some probably do get it, and just use the ensuing panic as their own bargaining tactic.
Jeff Wright believes that we should cheerfully do without because government can NEVER, EVER do without. And if that means this. country enters Zimbabwean or Venezuelan penury? So be it. At least that is what I get from his post.
NASA can do without for awhile.
Catch Thirty-Thr33,
I got something different from Jeff Wright’s comment. He has lumped all of NASA spending together as being productive, but that is only an average of the return on spending (return on investment). However, there are some projects that cost way too much and are not as productive as Jeff’s average. Think of how much greater that average return can be if we were to cut our losses on those projects that are costing more than we will get back from them.
“NASA, in the interests of fiscal responsibility to the taxpayers, we have to cut your budget. We’ve decided to kill a huge chunk of your science mission funding.”
“Whaaaat? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
“Okay. Is there something else we could cut instead? Perhaps on the HSF side? For instance, a certain large booster that has eaten your budget for a couple decades now?”
“NO. Absolutely not! And our Senators will back us up!”
“Very well. There go your science missions.”
“Um… give us a little time to think about it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Patrick Underwood: My gosh, I should have figured this out myself, having reported this kind of government negotiating strategy for decades. You outline the exact plan. Threaten big cuts in science. Then offer an alternative, cut SLS/Orion (giving the job to private enterprise).
This I think is exactly what is going on. Kudos to you!