White House may seek to slash NASA’s science budget by 50 percent. “It would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/white-house-may-seek-to-slash-nasas-science-budget-by-50-percent/
White House may seek to slash NASA’s science budget by 50 percent. “It would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/white-house-may-seek-to-slash-nasas-science-budget-by-50-percent/
45 Comments
How about we slash subsidies to space x by 50 per cent instead
Really? That would mean less business for Musk.
Got to pay for those tax cuts for the rich somehow.
Ket-boy will explore space, who needs exploration that benefits all, when you can give it to your friend?
The White House budget proposal for NASA includes includes a 50% cut to the Science Mission Directorate’s budget. This is the program that runs all planetary science, Earth sciences, astrophysics and heliophysics missions for NASA. The budget is not final of course, as it still needs to be negotiated with Congress, but it does show what the Trump’s administration goals are.
As Eric Berger wrote in this article, the Science Mission Directorate is responsible for many of NASA’s greatest achievements in the last years, such as continuous robotic presence on Mars, the Mars helicopter, JWST, New Horizons flying by Pluto, the Cassini mission that discovered water plumes on Enceladus, the asteroid sample return mission, Europa Clipper, the recent commercial lunar landings, and more.
What gets me angry is how during the election we constantly heard that Trump was somehow the better candidate for space. People constantly argued that by removing the bloat from NASA and canceling SLS and other programs, this would leave more money for science missions. This could not be further from the truth. This administration doesn’t care about science.
Cutting NASA’s budget in half would be taking 12.5 billion out of a nearly 7 TRILLION dollar budget. That’s less than .2 percent of our yearly budget.
I think we can look elsewhere for cuts and leave the people at NASA alone.
Edit: I was off on an order of magnitude. Still, leave them alone and look elsewhere for cuts.
Naturally, Berger doesn’t mention Musk or SpaceX’s involvement in this once in the article.
Don’t worry we’re going to spend 10x that directly funding Elon, the worlds biggest welfare queen.
Wait so are they literally removing funding from EVERYTHING so they can give tax cuts to billionaires?
Bet Buzz Aldrin is happy about that endorsement right about now.
But hey, r/spacexmasterrace amiright? So glad that humanities future in the stars is all being put on the shoulders of a ketamine addicted Nazi with 100 bastard children.
Understand this. This administration is hell bent on destroying the federal government. On liquidating it and selling its pieces off to the highest bidder. On privatizing every service and agency. This includes NASA. They mean to burn it down and hand over the charred remains to Musk.
This is only the beginning.
Why not decrease the US military budget by a measly 1.5% instead? Funny how republicans will happily eliminate education, parks, environmental efforts, and science programs but would cut off their own hands before even incrementally decreasing money going into the military industrial complex.
Right as an asteroid is about to swing past Earth. We are living in a farce.
I frequently both this sub and the NASA one and I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been more talk about things that musk, doge and especially what Vivek said a few months ago. I’ve been wondering if it’s to keep politics out of it, or just that it was too crazy to be actually put into action, so denial kicked in.
I’m scared of NASA being dismantled, patent and science stolen and exceptional scientists stolen and lost forever.
/norwegian that loves space and NASA.
Well, that’s ir for NASA. Waiting for that Chinese Uranus/Neptune orbiter and Mars sample return. I hope the Titan quadcopter Dragonfly can be the last hurray of American Planetary Science before fading into obscurity.
How about just cutting our defense budget down to five times the next ten countries…
If you voted for Trump and are now surprised by this, you just got what you deserved, and I wish you even worse.
Slash slash slash. Then tax cut for the rich, so they can buy gold toilets for their survival bunkers (whilst the economy tanks).
They’re after our pension funds..
Then space x takes over and gets the funding.
All according to plan.
You need to convince Trump that if he cuts NASA funding, that Putin will colonize the moon before the US. It doesn’t have to be true or rational; you just need to stoke his desire to take over everything. And he loves nothing more than “real estate” – the only topic he feels knowledgeable about.
BRO QUIT TAKING STUFF FROM THE PEOPLE, SCIENTIST, DOCTORS AND TEACHERS
IF I GOTTA HEAR ABOUT THESE FUCKING TROGLODYTES STOMPING HUMAN PROGRESS INTO THE GROUND ONE MORE TIME, I’MA HAVE A MENTAL BREAKDOWN
Space is one of my personal interests and if it gets turned into a for profit business like everything else that would be devastating.
Well yea, they wanna privatize and give money to SpaceX.
… I feel the need to point out that this is **literally** the plot of the back half of *Don’t Look Up*. A moron billionaire with the ear of the president convinces the government to dump all of their space money into his untested rocket tech. I can’t remember how that decision ends though…
Republicans can never be trusted — with literally anything.
Anyone who believes Trump is capable of doing anything good is thoroughly deluded. But hey at least he’s not a black woman and price of eggs is affordable again.
The NASA science budget is already minuscule. He’s just doing this because he doesn’t like NASA’s stance on climate science.
I’d be ok with this if they were also decreasing the Department of Defense’s budget by 50%.
But oddly, I haven’t heard anything about the DoD. It’s as if some people need the money coming from that department, which is about 30 times bigger than NASA’s budget.
Of course, so Musk can privatize and profit from it.
The Christians will love it. They already think most of this science stuff is of the devil anyway, or made up. And Christian conservatives are running the show right now, so the people won’t resist this enough to make it not happen unfortunately. Stop all progress, quit asking questions, why do we need to learn new things? That’s just the woke agenda. 🙄
Private space corporations are a mistake.
If they flourish, your descendants will die toiling on a mining colony because CyberMusk3000 decided to turn off the oxygen, or due to safety violations.
Edit: This is not a hyperbole or exaggeration. Just look at how workers keep dying, and being exploited in the present day, and add in the lack of oversight that comes about from being in space.
Is there any doubt that the “savings” from gutting NASA will be fully reappropriated by welfare queen elon? It’s wild that we’ve never seen such rampant and blatant cronyism in our lifetimes, and yet the Cons are suddenly fervent supporters of the elites and authoritarianism.
Oh no, president musk wants to cut funds for NASA and give the money to SpaceX?
NASA’s budget is already a fraction of a fraction of the military’s budget. Why not slash there, if you’re looking for savings.
Yeah, see? I’ve been posting on here for years and every time I pointed out that Elon was insane and that we should place more investment in NASA programs, which are about true progress, I was downvoted to hell for saying anything negative about their cherished billionaire doge-bag. But now the chickens have come home to roost. Space X rockets are blowing up in the sky left and right, raining down debris on the Caribbean unchecked. Musk is stealing multi-billion dollar contracts from companies like Verizon so he can shift air traffic control over to Starlink, which by the way, is also failing and falling out of the sky. He wants the ISS decommissioned immediately. Now this, which is also likely to funnel that allocated budget in the direction of private space programs. I wonder which the Trump admin will choose… What steams me more than anything is that our military budget is by comparison, MASSIVE. Yet the richest spoiled child with daddy issues in the world needs more and more to move fast, break things, wreck our economy, decimate our programs, and kill any form of true scientific advancement our society could potentially enjoy.
Thanks for nothing Elon. If you support/ed him, thanks for nothing to you, too. The enlightenment is over. We are now in the new dark ages.
Sounds about right but I’m sure they left out, the 50% budget cut will go straight to Space X. Better yet, Elon Musk
The ESA or the CNSA is gonna become the leading space agency, I’m calling it. Hope you don’t mind not being first on Mars, US.
And SpaceX will conveniently get that funding.
DonTheCon to slash NASA budget to fund the Felon’s SpaceX.
They generate value for people and not a corporation/ceo. It’s that simple. Any service that could instead be a Corp generating money is gonna get the axe 🙃
He’s going to give the money to SpaceX, isn’t he.
“It’s OK Elon can take the lead on space exploration instead.” You just know this will be the outcome
They will gave it to Elon instead. SpaceX needs more money as we all see, their stuff always exploding
This seems like a conflict of interest considering Musk’s involvement and his own endeavors, no? Urgh…
Europe seeks to send up its own satellites so you’re all welcome to come on over. Let the brain-drain begin!