The Trump administration’s planned cuts would end 53 planned or ongoing NASA Science missions
The Artemis II mission and its successful return to Earth have, for now, brought the American public’s attention back to NASA and its aspirational mission to push the boundaries of humanity into space.
Achieving those goals costs billions, but the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump’s administration is planning deep cuts to NASA’s budget.
Famed science communicator and teacher Bill Nye has described Trump’s planned cuts as “surprising, illogical, and very troubling” in a new op-ed for MS NOW.
“These cuts would be an insult to our astronauts and entire NASA workforce. Astronauts and their colleagues are civil servants who work hard, accomplish nearly impossible things and represent our country to the world,” he wrote.
There are scientific discoveries regarding both the moon and our own planet that only happened because of the apollo missions. The space race was also the catalyst that led to advanced technologies we use every day, like GPS, water filtration systems, and insulin pumps. It also contributed to electrical engineering and material science advancement for miniaturizing electronics, solar cells, digital thermometers and mammograms, digitial imaging sensors, cordless power tools, smoke detectors, fire-resistant material, durable parachute materials, scratch resistant coatings, memory foam, etc.
Even if you’re a cynic that has no respect for exploration or scientific endeavor, or minimizes the space race to a “dumb, authoritarian dick measuring contest” (which don’t get me wrong, it was also that, at first), the real world advancements that we spawned from these endeavors is pretty crazy. Turns out, when you let scientists and engineers push beyond what people have done before, beyond where they have gone before, and then let them iterate on that process to do it better next time, they can do some pretty amazing things.
And we did that with the technology of the 60’s - 80’s. We have had 40+ years of advancement now to push our endeavors further, and new challenges in mind for long term settlement, orbital launches, geological research, etc. We can only guess what advancements will come from having the challenges of space exploration pushing tech advancements again instead of the exclusively consumer-driven and military-driven shit we’ve seen over the last few decades.