‘Extinction-level cuts’ to space agency’s spending means labs will close and deep-space missions will be abandoned
Some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, such as the possibility of life on Mars or Venus, may never be solved because of Donald Trump’s proposed “extinction-level” cuts to Nasa spending, scientists are warning.
The Trump administration revealed last month its plan to slash the space agency’s overall budget by 24% to $18.8bn, the lowest figure since 2015. Space and Earth science missions would bear the brunt of the cutbacks, losing more than 53% of what was allocated to them in 2024.
If the budget is approved by Congress, opponents say, longstanding Nasa labs will close, deep-space missions, including many already under way, will be abandoned, and a new generation of exploration and discovery will never reach the launchpad.
It’s not just about privatization and you’re naive if you buy that explanation. It is about knee capping science because they do not value it. You can’t privatize basic scientific research because it is not, on its own, profitable. Privatizing is also not a formula for success when it comes to planetary exploration, as we’ve seen with the many failures private space companies have experienced trying to land on the moon (which is much much easier than interplantary mission development by orders of magnitude). This is largely because this expertise is solely located at NASA and only some of it has transferred to the private industry. Like I said earlier, nuking the NASA budget will not lead to the same missions getting developed privately, it will just kill the space science industry. Some of the expertise will go work on adjacent things, but most of it will just be lost. And that’s the goal - to kill science. If they can privatize a bit of it and win favor with some corpos that’s just a side benefit.
I don’t think it’s about privatizing research. I think it’s about privatizing… you know, space. Putting things in orbit. Having satellite infrastructure. And if someone wants to do research and can fund it, probably that part, too.
You also seem to assume I’m defending this. I’m not defending this. I’d first nationalize SpaceX than privatize NASA.
I understand you are not defending this, but you are uninformed on the implications (largely the fault of MSM’s coverage, not your own). The majority of what is getting cut in this budget is basic research. It’s planetary exploration with the goal of improving our understanding of the solar system and Earth. Unfortunately it is very expensive to do this basic research and it is not profitable, which is why I’m pushing back on your privatization spin. This is work that is not and will never be profitable. There are aspects of space exploration that can be profitable, a la SpaceX launching comm satellites to orbit, but this is not that and it’s a very important distinction to make because there are very few places in industry for these workers to move to. We will lose this knowledge and be forced to rediscover it in a more intelligent, wealthy, and Science minded era. And it’s a global issue because most other countries rely on the US’s investment in this sector, so it’s a global setback of several decades. That’s all I’m trying to communicate.
I am not uninformed. You are very excited to get to give this speech and are looking to project that lack of information onto someone, but I never “spun” this into the notion that SpaceX will take over NASA’s research functions. I said the goal is to push the business portions to private hands. We agree this is at the cost of dropping the pure research functions in most cases. I explicitly mentioned a scenario where this delays research by thirty years.
Sometimes I feel this place is so ideologically aligned people are desperate for someone who holds whatever normie stance they are itching for a chance to push against. Sometimes they will just go ahead and do that at whoever says something that sounds even vaguely different from the default stance, even if it’s not the thing they’re arguing against.