Tag: Congress

House committee support for threatened NASA missions is actually quite questionable

9:26 am

According to a House appropriations committee spending bill that it approved this week, it appears on the surface that it is canceling the proposed 24% cut by Trump to NASA’s budget as well as endorsing continued funding for some threatened missions. A close look however suggests this congressional support for NASA is somewhat superficial, and might actually be ephemeral.

The key is the language of the bill. From the link above:

The bill was largely unchanged from what the CJS [commerce, justice and science] subcommittee approved July 14. It includes $24.838 billion for NASA, nearly the same as the $24.875 billion the agency received in fiscal 2024 and 2025, and far above the $18.8 billion the administration proposed for fiscal 2026 in May.

Members adopted a manager’s amendment, a package of noncontroversial changes and corrections, on a voice vote. That amendment also made additions to the report accompanying the bill. The report includes language expressing support for several NASA missions targeted for cancellation, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Juno mission at Jupiter and the New Horizons mission in the Kuiper Belt.

The report does not specify funding levels for those missions, but the “continues support” language signals to NASA that it should fund continue operations within the agency’s science budget. [emphasis mine]

It is the vagueness of this language that suggests the support is ephemeral. The courts recently have consistently ruled that if Congress doesn’t specifically mandate spending on a project, the White House is free to move money around as it sees fit. By not expressly outlining funding for Chandra, Juno, and New Horizons, these congressmen are playing a shell game, whereby to their constituents they can point to this vote and claim they wholeheartedly supported NASA and these missions. At the same time, they also appear to be allowing Trump the freedom to go ahead and shut the missions down, as his budget has already proposed.

None of this is yet real. The bill still must be passed by the full House, as well as the Senate. It then has to be signed by Trump. A lot of changes would happen in that process.

Either way, it appears that within the House at least, there is some movement to at least make some budget cuts possible. The sad thing is that the House is not actually cutting the budget, even as it is allowing Trump a way to cut these relatively inexpensive on-going missions. Considering the debt, it would have been much better had the committee actually trimmed NASA’s budget, even a little, while at the same time allocating specific funds to keep these very cost-effective missions alive.

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New study of 300,000 people in Italy proves COVID jab caused gigantic increase in cancer cases

1:23 pm

Figure 1 from the study
Figure 1 from the study. Click for original. Anything
to the right of the vertical line indicates an increase
cancer diagnoses.

As noted bluntly by Health & Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. at a Senate hearing last week, “We were lied to about everything:” A new study of the entire population 11 years and older of a single province in Italy, 300,000 people in total, has now proven that the mRNA COVID jab results in a terrifying and skyrocketing increase in the numbers of cancer cases.

The researchers found that “vaccinated” individuals had far higher hospitalization rates for new cancer diagnoses than the unvaccinated, particularly for breast, bladder, and colorectal cancers. Hospitalizations for cancer were 35% higher in the vaccinated (HR 1.23). The risk spike was strongest among men and those with no prior COVID infection.

  • Overall Cancer Risk: +23% after just one dose
  • Breast Cancer: +54% increased risk
  • Bladder Cancer: +62% increased risk
  • Colorectal Cancer: +35% increased risk

The researchers warn that the danger persisted and continued increasing after multiple doses.

In other words, the entire world is now facing a possibly major increase in cancer cases and a significant lowering of life expectancy, because it panicked in 2020 over a respiratory virus comparable to the flu. Those few voices (such as mine) that tried to resist that panic and call for a reasoned response were routinely blacklisted and silenced, and the result is now an impending disaster, on top of the catastrophes we have already suffered due to lockdowns, social distancing, and mask and jab mandates.

Kennedy summed up this situation quite well at that Senate hearing on September, 4, 2025. He was attacked ruthlessly over and over again by Democratic Party senators, only to hit them back twice as hard, noting how they are all in the pay of the pharmaceutical companies that make the jab, bribes totaling millions. He started however with this stark condemnation:
» Read more

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Yesterday’s Senate hearing on Artemis: It’s all a game!

1:08 pm

Ted Cruz, a typical
Ted Cruz, a typical Congressional porkmeister

The Senate hearing that was held yesterday, entitled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race”, was clearly organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to promote a continuation of the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway parts of NASA’s Artemis program. And he was able to do so because senators from both parties felt the same way. They all want to continue this pork, and don’t really care whether those expensive assets can really accomplish what they promise.

Furthermore, the hearing was also structured to allow these politicians to loudly proclaim their desire to beat China back to the Moon, using this pork. They want the U.S. first, but they are almost all want to do this through a government-run program.

As such, the choice of witnesses and the questions put to them were carefully orchestrated to push this narrative. To paraphrase: “We have to beat China to the Moon! And we have make sure a NASA program runs the effort! And above all, we mustn’t let Donald Trump cut any of NASA’s funding, anywhere!”

It was therefore not surprising that the most newsworthy quote from the hearing was the comments by former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine about Starship and how its choice as a manned lunar lander was a bad one, and that it was likely going to the prime reason China will put humans back on the Moon ahead of us.
» Read more

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Trump once again moves Space Force HQ from Colorado to Alabama

12:55 pm

During his first term as president, Donald Trump attempted to move the headquarters of the Space Force Colorado to Alabama. That move, announced in January 2021, never happened, first because it came so late in his term and second because Biden had no interest in making it happen and eventually rescinded it in 2023.

Today Trump reinstated that decision, once again announcing that the Space Force headquarters will move to Huntsville, Alabama.

The politics for this change have been and will continue to be complicated. Alabama’s lower cost of living would save the government money, but the defense industry is also well clustered in Colorado due to the military’s space operations that have been there for many decades.

In general I have never quite understood Trump’s desire to do this. I suspect there are some quid pro quo agreements in the background with Alabama politicians: “If you bring the Space Force to Alabama, Mr. Trump, we will back you on your other plans.” Then again, Trump might simply want to punish the increasingly leftist haven of Colorado.

Either way, it is now likely to finally happen. Trump 47 has been moving fast on all his initiatives, and is aided in this by a staff that is largely supportive (unlike during Trump 45).

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New Horizons placed in hibernation, possibly forever

9:05 am

The science team running the New Horizons probe, now more then 5.7 billion miles from Earth, has placed the spacecraft into what will be its longest hibernation period so far, with the possibility that it could even last forever.

New Horizons, which had been in active data-collection mode since April, will now remain in hibernation. Pending a final Fiscal Year 2026 budget, the spacecraft may be awoken in late June 2026. This will be the longest hibernation period of the mission so far, surpassing the previous mark of 273 days from June 2022 to March 2023.

But the spacecraft won’t be completely at rest; New Horizons will continue to take round-the-clock measurements of the charged-particle environment in the Sun’s outer heliosphere and the dust environment of the Kuiper Belt using three different onboard scientific instruments. These data will be transmitted back to Earth when New Horizons wakes up. [emphasis mine]

Though the NASA press release puts up an optimistic front, it is very likely that this hibernation period will last significantly longer than planned, due to those budget negotiations. Trump’s budget proposes eliminating all funding for New Horizons, which will mean this hibernation period will be permanent. There will be no money to hire anyone to reactivate it.

Even if the budget is cut, it is probable that NASA management in the future will provide some cash. At the moment there is little for it to observe on a daily basis. All that needs to be done is to turn it on for short periods to download the heliosphere data. Management could simply decide to turn it on once every five years or so.

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Oh by the way, the FAA has approved the August 24th launch of Starship/Superheavy

12:07 pm

Increasingly irrelevant in the right places
Increasingly irrelevant in the right places

My headline reflects the sense of utter irrelevance of the FAA in announcing its approval of the launch licence for the tenth test launch of Starship/Superheavy (now scheduled for August 24, 2025) as well as its “closing” of its “investigation” into the failure during test flight nine.

As per the FAA in its statement, “There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation. The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a failure of a fuel component. SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.”

The FAA did not “oversee” SpaceX’s investigation. No one at the FAA has the slightest qualifications for doing so. All its bureaucrats did is sit in and watch, and when SpaceX’s engineers completed their work and “identified corrective actions,” the FAA paper-pushers pushed some paper to rubber stamp those conclusions.

Moreover, unlike during the Biden administration, the FAA did not waste any time or money retyping the SpaceX investigation. They simply approved it as is, and issued the launch license. And they apparently instantly agreed to the schedule proposed by SpaceX. In fact, it appears almost as if SpaceX announced the date before the FAA announced the license approval.

Elections matter. And they would matter less if we had had the sense in the past century to not cede so much power to an unelected federal bureaucracy that is really unfit to do the work we gave them. The goal now should be to take that power away from them, and to do it as quickly as it is humanely possible.

It appears at least when it comes to FAA launch licenses, Trump has made some significant progress towards this goal.

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Virginia’s politicians whine about a NASA plan to close the visitor center at Wallops

10:09 am

Chicken Little on the march! Virginia’s representatives are now in a panicked tizzy because it appears NASA is considering closing the visitors center at the Wallops Island spaceport on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Members of Virginia’s congressional delegation were shocked by news of the potential closure of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center and worry it will negatively impact the Eastern Shore’s economy.

Employees at Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops received word last week that management planned to close several facilities, including NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center — and federal workers asked for congressional support to preserve the local landmark.

Congresswoman Jen Kiggans, a Republican who represents Virginia’s 2nd District, said the proposed closure came as a shock. In a statement, she said was committed to supporting NASA Wallops staff. “This is an unacceptable and drastic step that will have a significant impact on local employees, residents, and visitors,” Kiggans said. “My staff and I are in contact with NASA to better understand the reasoning behind this reported decision as it is contradictory to the proposed House budget. Wallops has long been a vital part of our community, and we will do everything we can to support the work that’s done there and the people who work there.”

Nor is Kiggans the only politican whining. The article includes similar quotes from Democrat senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, as well as local state representative Rob Bloxom. All make the absurd claims that closing this one visitor center will destroy American civilization in Virginia.

And as usual for our propaganda press, no alternative opinions are offered. The only side that gets pushed is the pro-spending side.

What crap. NASA’s job is to foster a vibrant American space industry, by either developing or encouraging the development of actual technologies that can be used for this purpose. A visitor center has nothing to do with this job.

Moreover, such a visitor center employs a relatively small number of people. The economy of the Eastern Shore is not going to collapse by its closure. In fact, the economy won’t really notice it is gone in any significant way.

If we can’t cut the budget in this small way, we will never cut anything, and the country is doomed.

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Sending Juno to fly past interstellar comet 3I/Atlas?

10:42 am

3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble on July 21, 2025
Hubble’s most recent image of comet 3I/Atlas.
Click for original image.

It’s all clickbait! In what appears to be an example of silliness, a scientist, Avi Loeb of Harvard, has proposed repurposing the Jupiter orbiter Juno by using its remaining fuel and its main engine (unused since 2016 because it is feared it will explode if ignited) to send the spacecraft on a path allowing it to fly past the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas that is presently zipping through out solar system.

Not surprisingly, a politician, congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), immediately latched onto this idea to garner her own publicity.

Loeb believes Juno, which is scheduled to plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere at the end of its mission in Sept. 2025, could be repurposed. He suggests using its remaining fuel to redirect it toward 3I/ATLAS when the object passes within about 34 million miles of Jupiter in March 2026.

Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has backed the proposal in a letter [pdf] to interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, urging the agency to explore extending Juno’s mission. “It is recommended that NASA conduct a study to assess how much fuel is left in Juno’s engine, and I support an extension of the Juno mission at least until mid-March 2026 at a cost of about $15M per 6 months from the current expiration date of mid-September 2025,” Luna wrote.

The problem with this idea is that it isn’t realistic. Juno really doesn’t have sufficient fuel, and as I mentioned, its main engine is suspect, so suspect that the science team decided in 2016 to never use it again, thus leaving Juno in a higher than planned orbit that required twice as much time at Jupiter to get the same work done.

There is also one more reason to doubt Loeb’s proposal. He has also proposed that 3I/Atlas is an alien probe, ignoring or dismissing the images and data that make if very clear that it is nothing more than a comet, albeit interstellar in origin. It appears therefore that he might very well represent the quality of scientists that Harvard is hiring these days.

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Confusion reigns as to what shuttle will be moved to Houston, if any

9:20 am

Despite amendments in the reconciliation bill that said the space shuttle Discovery held by the Smithsonian in DC would be transferred to Houston for display, it appears there is uncertainty and confusion as to what shuttle will be moved, above and beyond the Smithsonian’s opposition to this transfer.

The legislation that required Duffy to choose a “space vehicle” that had “flown in space” and “carried people” did not specify an orbiter by name, but the language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law last month was inspired by Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to relocate Discovery. “The acting Administrator has made an identification. We have no further public statement at this time,” said a spokesperson for Duffy in response to an inquiry by collectSPACE.

It appears Duffy’s options are limited. NASA no longer has any title or ownership rights to the shuttles held by the Smithsonian and the California Science Center in Los Angeles. It owns the only remaining shuttle, Atlantis, which it has on display in Florida, but moving that to Houston would entail big political warfare.

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The word that best describes our present NASA lunar program is “delusional.”

12:16 pm

Artemis, a program based on fantasy
Artemis, a program based on fantasy

Increasingly it appears everyone in Congress, the White House, and NASA, as well as our bankrupt mainstream press, has become utterly divorced from reality in talking about NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The claims are always absurd and never deal with the hard facts on the ground. Instead, it is always “Americans are piorneers! We are great at building things! We are going to beat China to the Moon!”

An interview of interim NASA administration (and Transportation secretary) Sean Duffy yesterday on the Sean Hannity Show made all these delusions very clear. First Hannity introduced Duffy by stating with bald-faced ignorance that “NASA has a brand-new program. It is called Artemis that aims to get astronauts back on the Moon in the next couple of years.”

I emphasize “brand-new” because anyone who has done even two seconds of research on the web will know that Artemis has existed now for more than a decade. Hannity illustrates his incompetence right off the bat.

Duffy then proceeds to insist that the next Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, will fly in April 2026 and send four astronauts around the Moon, followed by the Artemis-3 manned landing one year later.

Being an incompetent member of the propaganda press, Hannity of course accepts these claims without question. He fails to question Duffy about the serious issues with the Orion heat shield, which experienced extensive unexpected damage that is still not understood during its return on the first Artemis mission in 2022.

Nor does either Duffy or Hannity mention the fact that for Artemis to land humans on the Moon SpaceX’s Starship not only has to become operational for human passengers, it needs an in-orbit refueling capability that does not yet exist. I have full confidence that SpaceX will eventually succeed in achieving these benchmarks, but I also doubt it will be able to do it by mid-2027, as claimed by Duffy.

Duffy and Hannity however are not alone in living in this dream world. » Read more

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Smithsonian opposes order to transfer space shuttle Discovery to Houston

9:39 am

The recent passed reconciliation bill included a provision ordering the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to transfer the space shuttle Discovery back to NASA so that it could be shipped to Houston for display, budgeting $85 million for the task.

The Smithsonian however is now opposing that provision, claiming Congress and the President had no authority to do so as it owns Discovery and had not agreed to the transfer.

In a formal response, the Smithsonian Institution says it owns Discovery, which, like the rest of its collection, is held in trust for the American public. The Smithsonian asserts that NASA transferred “all rights, title, interest and ownership” of the shuttle to the Institution in 2012, and that it is “part of the National Air and Space Museum’s mission and core function as a research facility and the repository of the national air and space collection.”

It does appear the Smithsonian might have a case, based on past precedent and the laws that established the institution as an independent entity. At the same time, Congress provides two-thirds of its funding, which surely gives Congress a say in its actions. Moreover, recent court rulings have generally ruled against such independent institutions, ruling that the Constitution does not allow Congress to cede either its authority or the President’s in such cases.

So, even if the Smithsonian should win in court, its funding could be threatened if it defies Congress. It will be entertaining to watch this kerfuffle play out.

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NASA’s work force is shrinking by about 4,000

10:11 am

The number of NASA employees that have accepted the Trump offer to leave has now grown to more than 4,000 people, reducing the entire workforce from 18,000 to 14,000.

Nearly 4,000 employees, or more than 20% of NASA’s workforce, have applied to leave the agency, NASA confirmed to CBS News Friday. About 3,870 employees have applied to depart NASA over two rounds through the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, NASA disclosed. The deadline for applications to the program is midnight Friday.

With those deferred resignations, NASA’s civil servant workforce would shrink from about 18,000 to 14,000 personnel. This figure also includes about 500 employees who were lost through normal attrition, the agency said.

It is certain that while Trump is office these workers will not be replaced. While most of the press and pro-government activists will claim this is terrible news, it is actually the best thing that can happen. Since NASA is now trying to use the capitalism model across the board, it doesn’t need that many employees. It is hiring the private sector to do most of its work. It doesn’t take that many people to review and issue a contract.

So, even if Congress rejects Trump’s proposed 24% cut to NASA’s 2026 budget and funds it entirely at the same levels as in 2025, the money will be more effectively used.

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Like the Senate the House appropriation committee rejects Trump’s NASA cuts, but differently

9:20 am

The NASA 2026 budget approved this week by the House appropriation committee has rejected the 24% cut proposed by the Trump administration, in a similar manner as the parallel Senate committee.

However, the two congressional committees are not in agreement on any of their spending proposals.

The totals recommended by the two committees are similar — $24.8 billion in the House, $24.9 billion in the Senate — but the specifics are different in many cases.

For example, the House wants to spend $300 million for NASA’s very messed-up Mars Sample Return project, while the Senate eliminated it entirely. The House also increases NASA’s manned exploration budget over Trump’s proposal, while the Senate cuts it. In science spending the House is less generous than the Senate, though both houses reject Trump’s cuts. In education the House agrees with Trump, zeroing out that funding, while the Senate wants to increase the ’25 budget slightly.

Before the 2026 budget is approved the two houses will have to negotiate an agreement to make their numbers match. What has usually happened in past negotiations is that the houses agree to approve the highest spending numbers in any budget item so that nothing gets cut and the budget continues to go up uncontrollably. We should not be surprised if our corrupt Congress does exactly that.

Even so, we should expect Trump to force significant changes at NASA, including budget reductions. Recent Supreme Court rulings have confirmed the president’s right to reorganize and even eliminate bureaucracies, as long as Congress doesn’t specify a particular spending item.

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Government employees: The most spoiled and privileged individuals on Earth

9:50 am

NASA: home to the privileged and perfect
NASA: home to the privileged and perfect

Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA employees and many of their supporters gathered yesterday for protests, demanding that their jobs be saved and that Congress not only cancel Trump’s proposed budget cuts to NASA, that Congress even consider increasing the budget because the work they do is so so SO vital.

The protests appeared to be organized by several groups, all claiming to be “grassroots” but all seeming to be well funded and comparable to other recent government protest groups at other agencies, issuing sanctimonious “declarations” that claim the cuts “to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security.”

Yet, the Trump cuts would only reduce NASA’s staffing of 17,000 by about 2,600 employees. How horrible!

This quote from the first link above is typical of the attitude of these government workers:
» Read more

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House follows Senate in canceling most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts

9:45 am

Like pigs at the trough
Like pigs at the trough

The House appropriations committee’s draft budget for NASA has followed the Senate appropriations committee in canceling all of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts, though it has shifted that funding significantly from science to manned space operations.

The House Appropriations Committee released the draft text of their version of the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA today. Like their Senate counterpart, the House committee would essentially keep NASA at its current funding level instead of imposing the severe 24.3 percent budget cut proposed by the Trump Administration. The CJS bill also includes almost $2 million for a White House National Space Council even though the Trump Administration has yet to establish one.

Unlike the Senate, which mostly kept the budget the same across all NASA departments, this House draft budget would reduce science and aeronautics spending from about $8.2 billion to $6.8 billion. Trump had requested only $4.5 billion for these departments.

In turn, the House would increase Trump’s request for NASA’s manned operations from $10.8 billion to $11.9 billion. Note that Trump’s proposed budget had already called for an increase here, so the House is clearly shifting funding to manned space in an enthusiastic manner.

At the same time, the House continues funding for the SLS and Orion programs Trump wishes to cancel. Both of these projects are over budget and behind schedule. Neither is very useful in the long run for exploring the solar system. If the House truly wanted to save money, it could easily fund all the cuts in science by cutting the billions spent yearly on these pork projects, and still lower NASA’s budget in total.

Based on the draft budget’s language [pdf], it is unclear whether the House has also funded the Lunar Gateway space station, as the Senate has, another useless pork project that Trump wishes to cancel.

I should note that the appropriations committee’s overall draft budget [pdf] does reduce the federal budget by about 2.8 percent. This is a marked change from past budgets, which often claimed (a lie) to cut spending but really only reduced the rate of budget growth. It appears the House is finally making some effort to shrink the size of the budget, though that effort is quite wimpy.

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Senate committee moves to cancel most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts

9:03 am

Like pigs at the trough
Like pigs at the trough

We’ll just print it! Though disagreements prevented the Senate’s appropriations committee from approving the 2026 bills covering the commerce, justice, and science agencies of the federal government (including NASA) , the committee yesterday appeared poised to cancel most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts and even add more spending across the board.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the top Democrat on the CJS subcommittee, said this morning the bill would fund NASA at $24.9 billion, slightly above its current $24.8 billion level, with the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) remaining level at $7.3 billion.

By contrast, the Trump Administration wants to cut NASA overall by $6 billion, from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. SMD’s portion would drop 47 percent, from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion.

The disagreements centered not on NASA, but on the Trump administration’s effort to cancel a very expensive new FBI headquarters building in the Maryland suburbs and instead shift the agency to an already existing building in DC. Van Hollen opposed this, and the ensuing political maneuvering forced the committee to cancel the vote.

This bill would once again continue full funding for SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway. It also includes funding for NASA’s very messed-up Mars Sample Return mission (which comprises the large bulk of the money added back in for science). From this it appears that the Republicans in the Senate are quite willing to join the Democrats in spending money wildly, as they have for decades. They have no interest in gaining some control over the out-of-control federal budget, in any way, as Trump is attempting to do.

What remains unknown is this: Who has the support of the American people? The election suggests the public agrees with Trump. History suggests that this support for cutting the budget is actually very shallow, and that while the public says it wants that budget brought under control, it refuses to accept any specific cuts to any program. “Cut the budget, but don’t you dare cut the programs I like!”

It is my sense that the public’s view is changing, and it is now quite ready to allow big cuts across the board. The problem is that the vested interests in Congress and in the DC work force are quite powerful, and appear to still control the actions of our corrupt elected officials.

Thus, the more of that work force that Trump can eliminate as quickly as possible, on his own, the more chance he will have to eventually bring this budget under some control.

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The walls of Jericho blocking Trump’s effort to streamline government have now fallen

12:11 pm

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! The Supreme Court ruling yesterday that allowed Trump’s plan to reorganize and reduce the federal workforce to go forward was far more significant than most realize. It in fact tells us that opposition to Trump’s effort is dissolving, and that he will have the ability in the last three years of his present term in office to complete this effort in a manner that will reshape the federal bureaucracy in ways so radical we will not recognize it when he is done — assuming Trump maintains his present aggressive effort.

First the background. In February Trump issued an executive order requiring agency managements throughout the executive branch to institute plans for reducing staffing signficiantly.

Titled “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” the executive order also severely limits federal departments’ ability to bring on more staffers and mandates that agency heads closely coordinate with their DOGE representatives on future hiring plans. Once the hiring freeze that Trump put in place is lifted, agencies will only be allowed to replace one of every four employees who leave and hiring will be restricted to the highest-need areas.

Plus, agencies will not be able to fill vacancies for career positions that DOGE team leaders think should remain open, unless the department head determines they should be filled. DOGE leaders at each agency will file a monthly hiring report to DOGE.

Not surprisingly numerous lawsuits were immediately filed to block this order, claiming that Trump was required to get Congressional approval for such actions.
» Read more

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Coalition of space companies begs Congress to fund office designed to track satellites

9:54 am

A coalition of 450 space companies has now submitted letters to both the House and Senate begging Congress to not kill the funding for an office in NOAA created during the first Trump administration and designed to help manage satellite traffic in orbit.

A coalition of space industry associations representing hundreds of companies is urging Congress to reject Trump Administration plans to kill the nascent Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). Developed through NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, TraCSS began beta testing last fall to provide data to civil and commercial satellite operators to avoid collisions. Just as the system is finally taking shape, it is targeted for elimination in the FY2026 budget request. The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up that proposal on Thursday when it marks up the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NOAA.

This new office was first conceived as a replacement for the tracking that the U.S. military has been doing since Sputnik was launched in 1957, information that it provides free to the industry. It appears Trump in his second administration has now concluded this new NOAA office is essentially redundant and therefore unnecessary.

The letters to the House [pdf] and Senate [pdf] urge Congress to reinstate the $65 million in spending for this NOAA office, but offer no suggestions on what to cut to fund this extra cost. Instead, like all such lobbying efforts, it expects Congress to simply print money to pay for the expense.

Meanwhile, it remains a valid question why this additional office is needed if the military has been doing the job quite successfully for the last three-quarters of a century. The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why? The military has to do it anyway for security reasons. Why waste money on a duplicate effort?

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Senate reconciliation budget bill includes Cruz’s big spending additions to NASA

9:36 am

Senate NASA budget increases

According to a tweet yesterday by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), the reconciliation budget bill that was passed by the Senate included the budget additions that Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had proposed to save SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway.

The graphic to the right lists these budget numbers. It is not clear whether the launch taxes on payloads that Cruz proposed were also included, though likely not based on the rules under which the reconciliation bill was passed.

This additional money for these projects contradicts directly the NASA 2026 budget proposal put forth by Trump that aimed to cancel Lunar Gateway and end SLS and Orion after only two more flights. Their existence in this passed Senate bill suggests that Congress is cool with the idea of spending this money and continuing these projects, even though they do nothing but waste taxpayer money and get us no where in space.

It also appears from the language in the graphic that the Senate is eager to also spend more money on NASA’s Mars sample return project, even though NASA itself still has no idea how to accomplish the task.

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House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force

10:45 am

Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.

And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.

The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.

According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.

This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.

What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.

But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.

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The Senate, led by Ted Cruz, endorses NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway

9:48 am

Let’s all go bankrupt! A bill introduced today by Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, rejects the Trump budget plan to phase out NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway programs that have cost so far tens of billions for decades without accomplishing anything, and instead expands funding over the next decade to these and many other projects and agencies at NASA.

The bill would allocate $2.6 billion to Lunar Gateway, $4.1 billion to build two more SLS rockets, $20 million to build one more Orion capsule, $1.25 billion more for ISS to continue its operations as is, and $1 billion to upgrade or expand facilities at five NASA centers in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

This pork-laden bill would also fund a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter for $700 million and add $325 million to the $843 million contract NASA has with SpaceX to build the de-orbit vehicle for bringing ISS down in a controlled manner once it is retired.

What this bill tells us is that these Senators, led by “lying” Ted Cruz (to use the nickname Trump pinned on him during the 2016 presidential election campaign), are still unwilling to face the realities of the national debt, and want to spend money we don’t have in order to make believe they are grand explorers sending Americans into space. Instead, these idiots are simply funneling cash to their states in order to bribe voters to vote for them.

As Elon Musk so correctly noted, there is an election coming in 2026. Maybe it is time to throw them all out.

What this bill also tells us is that Trump is going to find it very difficult to get the budget under control. The Senate doesn’t care if the country goes bankrupt. They intend to spend our money like it grows on trees, to hell with the future. Shame on them.

Sadly, these senators know they have the backing of almost the entire press corp, which is why they are doing this. They figure they will get great press for “saving” NASA, even if it bankrupts the country. Worse, it appears the press is all for helping them do so.

R.I.P. America.

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Scientists release the first year’s data from the Pace orbiter

10:07 am

Pace global data, August 2024
Click for original movie.

Launched in early 2024, the Pace orbiter was designed to track the evolution of the leaves of trees globally throughout the entire year. NASA has now released the data from the first twelve months, showing the seasonal changes of trees as the Earth rotates the Sun and the seasons change globally.

The map to the right is a screen capture from one of many videos showing these changes. The green indicates the global spread of tree cover in the middle of August in the northern hemisphere as well as in the equatorial regions of South America and Africa. Other movies focusing on North America, South America, Europe, India, etc, can be viewed here.

PACE measurements have allowed NASA scientists and visualizers to show a complete year of global vegetation data using three pigments: chlorophyll, anthocyanins, and carotenoids. That multicolor imagery tells a clearer story about the health of land vegetation by detecting the smallest of variations in leaf colors.

…Anthocyanins are the red pigments in leaves, while carotenoids are the yellow pigments – both of which we see when autumn changes the colors of trees. Plants use these pigments to protect themselves from fluctuations in the weather, adapting to the environment through chemical changes in their leaves. For example, leaves can turn more yellow when they have too much sunlight but not enough of the other necessities, like water and nutrients. If they didn’t adjust their color, it would damage the mechanisms they have to perform photosynthesis.

In the visualization, the data is highlighted in bright colors: magenta represents anthocyanins, green represents chlorophyll, and cyan represents carotenoids. The brighter the colors are, the more leaves there are in that area. The movement of these colors across the land areas show the seasonal changes over time.

You can read the full paper describing the first year’s data here.

The Trump budget presently funds Pace for two more years of observations, at about $26 million per year. This is an obvious example of a satellite whose life should be extended for as long as possible. This long term data would likely confirm other data that indicates the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is greening the Earth, helping plant life that provides us oxygen to breath and food to eat.

To do so, however, other cuts in NASA will have to be found to pay for that extension. I once again wonder about the half a billion NASA spends for its “Mission Enabling Services”, which covers NASA’s human resources division, public relations department, and its equal opportunity division, as well as other more useful departments. Surely some money from these bureaucratic divisions could be found to finance this actual useful research.

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Understanding Trump’s proposed NASA cuts, in the larger context of the overall federal budget

1:44 pm

U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025
U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025. Click for original.

For my entire life it has always been the same: Whenever any politician or elected official proposes any cuts to the federal budget, and most especially when those cuts are aimed at a popular government agency like NASA, the news reports in the mainstream press are uniformly hostile.

Trump’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 24% in 2026 has been no different. Here are just a few headlines:

This list is only a sampling, but they are typical of almost all the reporting now and that always happens when big cuts are proposed in any government program. The spin is always the same: “These cuts are horrible, their acceptance would be the act of a barbarian, and by doing so will certainly cause the fall of civilization!”

Above all, the focus is always on the cuts themselves, and never on the larger picture.

I am not going to do that. I have reviewed in detail the proposed cuts to NASA, and am now going to take a detailed look, but will do so by considering the larger context of the overall federal budget and the need to get its spending under control.

And out of control that budget is, as indicated by the screen capture above of today’s US Debt Clock. The United States is bankrupt. If we don’t gain some control over federal spending in a very near future some very bad things are going to happen, and soon. And those bad things will likely shut down luxury items like NASA entirely, not just impose some cuts to its overall budget.

All Trump is doing is attempting a first stab at this problem. The real question is whether he has made a rational and reasonable attempt, or whether it should be revised in some manner.

This is the perspective I bring to this issue. I just wish others would do the same.
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Trump’s NASA budget cuts and rejection of Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator signal a very bright future for American space

1:09 pm

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
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.
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Trump budget proposes putting a final end to the delayed and blocked Thirty Meter Telescope

12:01 pm

There is a lot more to report, and I will do so in a day or so, but I thought it worthwhile to quickly note the the proposed science cuts in the proposed Trump budget for 2026 includes the elimination of all funds for Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii.

In the budget request, NSF [National Science Foundation]… says it will back only one of the two $3 billion optical telescopes that the astrophysics community wants to build. That honor goes to the Giant Magellan Telescope already under construction in Chile. Its competitor, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), “will not advance to the Final Design Phase and will not receive additional commitment of funds from NSF,” according to the budget request.

The NSF has never had enough money to finance both telescopes. The fact that TMT has been blocked for more than a decade by DEI protesters in Hawaii, with the aid of the state government (controlled entirely by Democrats), makes funding it pointless, and a waste of the taxpayers’ money. It long past time to pull the plug.

As I say, there is a lot more details to report in this budget proposal, including its effort to slash a lot of science government spending, but that will have to wait for later essays. I can promise you one thing, however: I will not do what the rest of the press does, and write a knee-jerk propaganda piece in support of that spending. The science mafia at NASA and the NSF and other agencies has funded a lot of junk in the last few decades. It is time for a reckoning.

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Senate schedules vote for confirming Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator

2:48 pm

The Senate is now targeting early June for its vote on Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June. The Senate is not in session the week of May 26 because of the Memorial Day holiday.

Since his nomination was approved by the Senate Commerce committee in April, Isaacman has been meeting with many other senators. The article at the link does the typical mainstream press thing of pushing back 100% against the proposed NASA cuts put forth by Trump’s 2026 budget proposal, telling us that these senators were generally opposed to those cuts and questioning Isaacman about them, a claim not yet confirmed. It did note something about those senators and those proposed cuts that if true was very startling and possibly very encouraging.

While many of the proposals in the budget, like winding down SLS and Orion, were expected, the scale of the cuts, including a nearly 25% overall reduction in NASA spending, still took many by surprise. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Congress was not surprised by the proposed end of SLS and Orion. It even appears they are ready to give it their stamp of approval.

None of this is confirmed, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. Still, the winds do appear to be blowing against SLS and Orion.

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NASA cancels VIPER solicitation

9:06 am

NASA today announced that it has canceled its solicitation from the private sector, asking for proposals for launching its overbudget and as yet unfinished lunar rover VIPER to the Moon.

NASA announced Wednesday it is canceling its Lunar Volatiles Science Partnership Announcement for Partnership Proposals solicitation, which sought opportunities to send VIPER to the Moon at no cost to the government.

The announcement, which was very short and lacking in any details, stated also that the agency “will announce a new strategy for VIPER in the future.”

Some background: VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch.

This decision suggests the agency did not get any worthwhile proposals. Apparently, no one was interested in paying the cost to get VIPER finished (about $100 million) and launched. It is also likely that the planned Trump budget cuts had an impact on this decision. NASA management probably recognized that there was no way they could con the administration into forking over any money to finance any private proposal.

It is also possible that this cancellation now is part of the typical game NASA managers always play to get Congress to fund bloated programs like this. Cancel it, get the propaganda press to cry about how the cancellation is so terrible, which in turn gets Congress outraged and willing to approve the extra funds.

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Jared Isaacman’s nomination approved by Senate committee

12:24 pm

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today voted 19 to 9 in favor of Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee to become NASA administrator.

The vote was 19-9, with all Republicans and four Democrats voting yes and nine Democrats voting no. The four Democratic yes votes were Senators Maria Cantwell (Washington), Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), John Hickenlooper (Colorado) and Andy Kim (New Jersey).

The nine Democratic no votes were Senators Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Gary Peters (Michigan), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), Jacky Rosen (Nevada), Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (Delaware).

The opposition here is almost solely based on Trump Derangement Syndrome. The only policy for these Democrats is to oppose all things Trump, even if that opposition makes no sense. This is not to say that Isaacman is a perfect choice. At the moment it is not clear exactly where he stands on Trump’s effort to shrink the waste in the federal government, including NASA.

Isaacman’s nomination still has to be confirmed by the full senate. Expect him to be approved handily, with the vote breaking down along similar party lines.

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Trump cuts to NOAA include major shake-up on how it gathers weather data

9:26 am

According to the budget data that was leaked anonymous last week, the Trump administration is proposing a major restructuring of NOAA’s satellite operations, shifting from building geosynchronous weather/climate satellites in partnership with NASA to focusing on buying weather data from commercial smallsats.

The plan would initially reduce NOAA’s program by two-thirds.

The document suggests NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) “immediately cancel all major instrument and spacecraft contracts on the GeoXO program,” saying the projected costs are “unstainable, lack support of Congress, and are out of step with international peers.”

GeoXO is a $19.6 billion program that includes six satellites and ground infrastructure to significantly enhance NOAA’s ability to monitor weather, map lightning, and track ocean and atmospheric conditions over decades. To maintain observations from geostationary orbit at the conclusion of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R Series, the White House memo calls on NOAA to “immediately institute a major overhaul to lower lifecycle costs by 50 percent” with annual costs below $500 million, while remaining on schedule to launch the first satellite in 2032.

Rather than expanding the geostationary constellation to include satellites over the East, West and Central United States, the proposal includes only East and West satellites like the GOES-R Series. OMB also recommends an immediate end to NOAA relying on NASA to help it acquire weather satellites.

Maybe the most controversial recommendation calls for NOAA to focus on gathering daily weather data while ending its monitoring of long term ocean and atmospheric climate trends.

The shift from NOAA-built satellites to purchasing weather data from commercially launched and built satellites makes great sense, and is the most likely part of this plan to get implemented. Similarly, ending NOAA’s reliance on NASA will help streamline the fat from both agencies.

Whether the Trump administration can force an end to NOAA’s climate gathering operations is less clear. The politics suggest this will be difficult. The realities however suggest that a major house-cleaning in this area is in order, as there is ample evidence that the scientists running this work have been playing games with the data, manipulating it in order to support their theories of human-caused global warming.

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Texas lawmakers now lobbying to move NASA headquarters to Houston

9:20 am

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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