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    NASA funding is an ugly casualty of the ‘big, beautiful bill’
    Space

    NASA funding is an ugly casualty of the ‘big, beautiful bill’

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    16 Comments

    1. ReadingTheRealms on

      Our entire country’s wellbeing is a casualty of this atrocity of a bill. The government is being stripped for parts and sold off to billionaires because they don’t have enough money yet.

    2. AverageJoe-707 on

      I hope all the MAGAs who will be losing their medical coverage are very happy.

    3. sovietarmyfan on

      I am willing to bet that Trump will soon announce more money for NASA. It’s what he does. Then he’ll claim that he brought the US back to the moon.

    5. 4RCH43ON on

      Increased spending for fascism, everything else gets cut, including billionaire’s taxes.

      Congress sold out our country for a conman.

    6. Githil on

      NASA hasn’t done anything interesting since landing the Curiosity Rover on Mars in 2012. At this point, it’s just a money pit.

    7. HomeFade on

      Mr cold war space race over there is pulling the strings now and this is hardly a surprise.

    8. arizonaskies2022 on

      The pending budget for fiscal year 2026 is the actual legislation that will specifically kill most NASA science. The BBB is about tax cuts and policy, congress can still double NASA’s science budget to save and expand on all missions and triple the NSF budget if they so choose.

    9. peter303_ on

      I saw a list of decommissioned and cancelled NASA space probes and its devastating. Nearly half of the constellation. These consist of a number on extended missions like Juno and those less than 25% built like the two 2030s Venus craft. A few will be restored by their protective congressmen. But a couple generations of space scientists will be obliterated.

    11. rocketmonkee on

      There’s a bit of nuance to the full story, which the author acknowledges in the middle of the article, buried between a couple of ads:

      >Fortunately, the bill is not the end of the story where NASA funding is concerned. Congressional appropriators still have to round out the space agency’s spending bill for the next fiscal year.

      The recent appropriations markup that was released from Commerce, Justice, and Science Committee restores almost all the funding that the White House proposed to cut. We’ll see what happens as the the various appropriations bills work their way through Congress, but as of now it’s looking like Congress is going to push back against Trump.

    12. ilovemytablet on

      The entire science education community on YT has been sounding the alarm over the funding cuts that are taking place due to this administration. Sad to see this gutting unfolding in real time

    13. godneedsbooze on

      And the NSF

      And the NIH

      And the CWA

      And the EPA

      And the CFPB

      And the education ayatem

    14. jfoxworth on

      NASA needs a massive overhaul in its mission, how it handles personnel, how it handles race and gender, and how it funds things.

      NASA used to build things. It had engineers and everything was done in house. Then, we began to hire more and more people to do logistics and fewer and fewer engineers that actually handled design – fluid flow, finite elements, heat transfer, etc. Eventually, NASA became unable to do these things and was fully reliant on “contractors” like Boeing and LM.

      However, the number of “engineers” at NASA only increased …

      Now, those contractors are often reliant on “subcontractors” to handle the technical work. Why? because we wanted to skew the racial numbers so we force White male engineers to broker their labor through minority owned subcontracting firms.

      In these roles, those White males have no rights in terms of company ethics, get less pay, have zero opportunities for advancement, and work on a contract to contract basis. As a result, the best and brightest leave.

      We’ve now spent over $30 billion on Orion and 20 years – making the investment of time and money more than any other capsule. This additional $20 billion will result in only a handful of missions and the capsule part of Orion will cost more than the capsule part of Apollo.

      For context, from the start of the space program through Mercury, Gemini, and the END of Apollo was less than 15 years. We’re at 20 years with Orion and no manned launch has happened yet, despite its $30 billion price tag. The reason for this (in my experience) is that the Orion has been a jobs program and a money siphoning scheme.

      I can give examples of the fraud that I saw as an engineer on this program. The side hatch was completely fabricated. They just took the design from another vehicle, enlarged it, and pretended to have done mathematics. It was insane. That same door is now one of several problems holding up the launch.

    16. drizel on

      It’s all casualties for the sake of the billionaires. Think of the billionaires!