Tag: Congress

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.
» Read more

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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.
» Read more

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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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Maybe it finally is time we actually made these major budget cuts at NASA

12:05 pm

Chicken Little rules!

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:

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.
» Read more

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Congress: Let’s throw some more astronaut lives away so we can preen for the camera!

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Here we go again: As I noted yesterday, the hearing this week of Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s nomination to become NASA’s next administrator, revealed almost nothing about what Isaacman plans to do once confirmed by the Senate. He very carefully kept his options open, even while he strongly endorsed getting Americans on the Moon as fast as possible in order to beat the Chinese there. When pressed by senators from both parties to commit to continuing the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway projects to make that happen, Isaacman picked his words most cautiously. He noted that at the moment that plan seemed the best for getting to the Moon first. He also noted repeatedly that this same plan is years behind schedule and overbudget.

Like any smart businessman, Isaacman knows he cannot make any final decisions about SLS, Orion, or Gateway until he takes office and can aggressively dig into the facts, as administrator. He also knew he could not say so directly during this hearing, for to do so would antagonize senators from both parties who want those programs continued because of the money it pours into their states. So he played it coy, and the senators accepted that coyness in order to make believe they were getting what they want.

But what do these senators want? It appears our politicians (including possibly Trump) want NASA to launch humans to the Moon using SLS and Orion and do so as quickly as possible, despite knowing that both have real engineering issues of great concern. Instead, our elected officials want politics to determine the lunar flight schedule, instead of engineering, the same attitude that killed astronauts on Apollo 1 in 1967, on Challenger in 1986, and on Columbia in 2003. The engineering data then said unequivocally that things were not safe and that disaster was almost guaranteed, but NASA and Congress demanded the flights go on anyway, to serve the needs of politics.

With SLS and Orion it is now the same foolishness all over again. » Read more

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Ted Cruz: Isaacman in interview commits NASA to getting Americans to Moon fast

8:52 am

In a tweet posted yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that in his private interview with Jared Isaacman, nominee for the post of NASA administrator, Isaacman “committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP.”

During our meeting, Mr. Isaacman committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP so we can develop the technologies needed to go on to Mars.

The moon mission MUST happen in President Trump’s term or else China will beat us there and build the first moonbase.

Artemis and the Moon-to-Mars Program are critical for American leadership in space!

It appears Cruz is trying to apply pressure on Isaacman and the Trump administration to not cancel SLS, as has been rumored for months. Though SLS and Orion have numerous issues, being too costly and cumbersome with risky designs that threaten the lives of any astronauts on board, cancelling them would likely delay any American manned mission to the Moon for several years, possibly allowing China to get there first.

We shall get a better idea of this situation at Isaacman’s nomination hearing, scheduled for tomorrow.

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Senate schedules hearing to review Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator

8:59 am

After months of delays, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday finally announced it has scheduled for April 9, 2025 the confirmation hearing for Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

I have previously speculated that the delay in scheduling this hearing was because there was opposition to Isaacman among Republicans both in the Senate and inside the White House, based on his past donations to the Democratic Party as well his previously strong support for Divesity, Equity, and Inclusion in his companies. It appears Isaacman must have eased those concerns when he began face-to-face private meetings with several Senate Republicans in the last two weeks, thus allowing the hearing to be scheduled.

Isaacman has been in Washington in recent days for one-on-one meetings with senators, a standard part of the confirmation process before a formal hearing. That included Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on aviation, space and innovation, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which funds NASA.

Moran said in an April 1 social media post that he met with Isaacman and discussed topics such as exploration and “a shared desire to beat our adversaries back to the Moon” as well as work on science and technology at NASA. “I am eager for the Commerce Committee to quickly conduct a confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead NASA,” Moran stated.

It now appears likely that this opposition is dissolving, and that Isaacman’s confirmation is likely.

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As Space Force switches to capitalism model for its satellites, it will also not name the companies it hires

9:58 am

Capitalism in space: The main reason President Trump got the Space Force established in his first term was because the Air Force resisted rethinking its space military operations. It insisted on building large government-built satellites that took years to complete and always went overbudget and behind schedule.

The creation of the Space Force gave new people the ability to push for a major change, switching to the capitalism model whereby the government designed and built nothing but instead acted as a customer buying what it needed from the private sector. In addition, it allowed a major shift from those big satellites — easy targets for destruction — to the large private constellations of many small satellites, cheap to build and launch and difficult for other militaries to take out.

The Space Force — in order to protect the satellite companies it hires to build these satellites — has now announced that it will no longer publish the names of those companies.

The U.S. Space Force plans to keep the names of commercial companies participating in its new space reserve program under wraps, aiming to protect them from potential adversary threats as commercial satellites play a growing role in military operations.

Col. Richard Kniseley, director of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, said companies signing agreements under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program can disclose their participation but are not required to. “That potentially puts a target on their back,” Kniseley told SpaceNews, underscoring the risk to private-sector firms providing space-based services during wartime.

Under this program, the Space Force has already signed contracts with four satellite companies, but the names remain undisclosed.

Though there is some logic to this decision, it carries great risk of corruption and misbehavior. Almost every time government bureaucrats and private companies are allowed to work in secret we routinely see kickbacks, bribery, and contract payoffs. And don’t expect congressional oversight to prevent such things, since there is now ample evidence from DOGE that our federal lawmakers have been quite willing to take their own payoffs to allow such corruption to prosper.

The switch to capitalism by the Pentagon is unquestionably a good thing. It will get more done for less. Letting it act in secrecy is a mistake however. Better to live with the risk of attack than allow our government and the companies it issues big money contracts to do things behind closed doors.

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Rolling Stone provides more details about Jared Isaacman and his nomination as NASA administrator

10:08 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

This article from Rolling Stone published yesterday provides a wealth of new information about Jared Isaacman, Trump’s still unconfirmed pick to become NASA’s next administrator.

Two key details: First, the article quotes Isaacman saying he opposes NASA’s policy of signing up two companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to build manned lunar landers.

I will try to help, but this is why I get frustrated at two lunar lander contracts, when will be lucky to get to the [Moon] a few times in the next decade. People falsely assume its because I want SpaceX to win it all, but budgets are not unlimited & unfortunate casualties happen.

In other words, he opposes using NASA to develop an aerospace industry with multiple companies capable of doing things NASA needs done. He also appears to dismiss the value of redundancy that two landers provides.

Second, the article provides links to the financial [pdf] and ethics [pdf] disclosures that he submitted to the government after being named as nominee. In the financial statement he indicates he paid SpaceX more than $50 million for providing the transportation for his multi-mission Dragon/Starship Polaris Dawn manned program. In the ethics statement he asserts he would end that contract if confirmed as NASA administrator, with SpaceX refunding any monies for services not yet rendered. The program itself would be suspended until Isaacman completes his term as administrator.

The Rolling Stone article, though detailed and fair-minded, appears to strongly endorse Isaacman, and thus joins a growing public campaign from many insider Washington players — a large number of whom have been passionately hostile to Donald Trump — to get Isaacman approved. At the moment however his nomination appears stalled because the Trump administration has not yet submitted to the Senate the paperwork needed to allow that body to schedule hearings.

The strange campaign by many of Trump’s opponents to endorse Isaacman continues to suggest to me that the Trump administration has had second thoughts about its NASA nominee. The swamp now wants him, and this is raising hackles inside the administration, which thus explains the slow-walking of his paperwork.

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