House ignores request for more NASA money for moon mission
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A House committee today approved a NASA budget that ignored the Trump administration’s request for $1.6 billion more money to support its attempt to land a manned mission on the Moon by 2024.
Instead, the committee shifted more money into earth science and Gateway.
Whether this budget is what ends up being enacted remains to be seen. It does appear however that Trump will have great trouble funding his Moon project. Sadly, that lack of funding does not mean the overall federal budget is coming under control. On the contrary, it appears the Democratic-controlled House simply wants to spend lots of money, but on different things.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
A House committee today approved a NASA budget that ignored the Trump administration’s request for $1.6 billion more money to support its attempt to land a manned mission on the Moon by 2024.
Instead, the committee shifted more money into earth science and Gateway.
Whether this budget is what ends up being enacted remains to be seen. It does appear however that Trump will have great trouble funding his Moon project. Sadly, that lack of funding does not mean the overall federal budget is coming under control. On the contrary, it appears the Democratic-controlled House simply wants to spend lots of money, but on different things.
Earth science + gateway = establishment stuff.
Moon 2024 = Trump stuff.
They don’t want to give him this win, especially not during his second term.
P.S.: Nothing against Earth science or better measurements of climate change. I don’t want to see it associated with liberal talking points; actually we have to free it from the politicization that poisoned those fields.
This is a House Appropriations Committee, not an Authorization Committee. So what happened is that committee decided to provide funds for what was already in their hopper — namely the original Trump budget request from February plus the amendments given that subsequently. The size and scope of the Artemis project has not been approved by the House, and how much to allocate to it this coming year has not been decided by an authorization committee, so arguably the appro- privation committee has been operating as it should. There’s still plenty of time to amend NASA’s funding, either in the House or Senate, or Joint Conference sessions.
Other than this being Democrats against Trump (and Bridenstein) this isn’t a real case of “Democrats Against Trump.” House committees have worked this way back during the Obama administration, the GW Bush administration, the Ciinton administration, and so on maybe as far as George Washingtons.
Does this mean that Trump wont be getting his cut to Gateway funding?
I think it is more likely that these lunar prospecting missions will get going than any type of “big” program. They can build them up incrementally to support larger (in scope, scale, and difficulty) missions as time goes on. They operate on shorter timelines, especially for the outcome, which fit in better with the budgeting process.
But with Democrats giving more money to SLS/Orion/Gateway who knows? Just goes to show how little control Trump has over the process and how hard it would be for him to do what so many space nerds want in cancelling SLS.