Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way The White House has proposed slashing NASA's budget by 24 percent, dropping it from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. If approved, it would mark one of the agency's deepest single-year cuts in federal support, and crash its inflation-adjusted funding to levels not seen in decades. The cuts are just a recommendation at this point …
a) 'humans in space' is NOT "a vanity project"
b) Artemis' design is way too expensive and Elon is already proving the private sector CAN do it better
c) Climate change nonsense is NOT "useful science"
d) Boeing represents the OLD way of thinking with regards to NASA contracts
e) given opportunity, OTHERS can build rockets besides Elon. For some unknown reason, Bezos hasn't gotten people into orbit yet. But he COULD.
A private space station would not be limited by "international diversity" [i.e. one part run by USA, another by Russia, another by EU, etc.] but WOULD be open to all nations. Most likely it would use less expensive construction than "a government build", be more repairable, and modular enough to swap things out, and may also have some form of artificial gravity available. Most usefully it could be a refuelling station and cargo hub, like a modern day international airport, and possibly allow for construction in space.
Back when I was in the Navy, they spent YEARS working on the new officer's barracks at the Sub base, and had not even finished it when I left. But when McDonalds was given the go-ahead to build a restaurant, it went from bare dirt to serving burgers in 3-4 months. Imagine THAT!!! I think the private sector CAN do it better and it makes sense to DO SO *WITHOUT* "old style" COST OVERRUN-DRIVEN BUREAUCRATIC *FOREVER*-CONTRACTS - INCLUDING cost-inefficient development in-house BY NASA.
[if it were me I'd start a space construction and cargo company using robots and Falcon launches, focusing on easily swapped-out inflatable modules to build mini-stations that can be stuck together and/or reconfigured easily]
a) Debatable at best. b) Returning to the Moon was Trump's grand plan in the first place, Artemis is his baby already. c) Just plain false. d) Well yes, and? e) True, but...
A private space station would not be limited by anything. It would be controlled by some insanely rich dude. It might or might not have all the properties you seem eager to assign to it, but that would be largely irrelevant because we the people would have no way of using it anyway: it would be there to further the ambitions of the owner who was, most likely, trying to build his (I bet anything it's a he) empire in space. Could it be a refuelling station? Well, sure, but only for the owner. Cargo hub? - for cargo from where to where, exactly?
Bombastic Bob: c) Climate change nonsense is NOT "useful science"
veti: c) Just plain false.
Sadly Trump agrees with Bob, rather than, for example the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union:
"Two major US scientific societies have announced they will join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact days after Donald Trump’s administration dismissed contributors to a key Congress-mandated report on climate crisis preparedness.
On Friday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) said that they will work together to produce over 29 peer-reviewed journals that will cover all aspects of climate change including observations, projections, impacts, risks and solutions.
The collaboration comes just days after Trump’s administration dismissed all contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, the US government’s flagship study on climate change. The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors had left the future of the study in question; it had been scheduled for publication in 2028.
The NCA had been overseen by the Nasa-supported Global Change Research Program – a key US climate body which the Trump administration also dismissed last month. The reports, which have been published since 2000, coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/03/us-scientific-societies-climate-report
Come on, Bob. Look at the literature, find out how much coal, oil and gas has been burnt since 1800, look at the change to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and do the math. (Please.)
You're wasting your time. Climate change has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
Unfortunately there are many people with unreasonable doubt who are so invested in their position they will not even consider they could be wrong and definitely will never look at the oceans of research but persistently cling to idiotic straw man arguments.
I'm more concerned about the excessive hot air and methane in the atmosphere at the moment. Most of it coming out the mouths and rectums of right wing nutjobs.
I'm sure after many years, and many billions, you can tell me (ie, cite) the exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, the exact amount of anthropomorphic CO2 & methane emitted by human activity vs natural, the amount of warming over and above the expected following an Ice Age (large or small) etc etc.
And then why this is any of NASA's business.
Some of this stuff is simple. So the average human produces around 250kg CO2 a year just by breathing. NASA's obviously interested in that stuff given they're putting people into sealed environments for prolonged periods of time. What happens down here in the fresh air? Not their problem.
But the mouth breathers and leff wing nutjobs are convinced it is. This has been an extremely lucrative meme, with the UK paying around £26bn a year in direct and indirect subsidies. That works out to around £900 a year for consumers, 1/3rd directly onto energy bills, the rest onto higher costs. Hence inflation, cost of living, businesses closing due to high costs etc etc. Then there's 'Net Zero', which if the UK manages to achieve will cost a lot more and achieve nothing because it'll make essentially zero difference to either CO2 or temperatures.
NASA's GISS has spent years inventing imaginary surface temperatures, and getting that wrong. Other agencies exist that have a more direct responsibility, ie NOAA, EPA, and because Global Warming has been the grift that keeps on grifting, there's a lot of duplication and waste. So cutting that and saving taxpayer's money is surely a good thing, especially when the science is supposedly settled. No need for 60,000 activists and lobbyists to jet in to Belem for the next IPCC COP jolly, so no need to cut down rainforests to build a new road and build a new airport to support the influx of rent-seekers. No real need to give the UN EP the $100bn a year either.
NASA gets refocused on space and space exploration, and becomes less of a bloated bureaucracy.. But the budget still has to get past Congress, so the Senate Launch System and barrels of pork might still get saved.
"I'm sure after many years, and many billions, you can tell me (ie, cite) the exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, the exact amount of anthropomorphic CO2 & methane emitted by human activity vs natural, the amount of warming over and above the expected following an Ice Age (large or small) etc etc."
Once upon a time, a very religious family friend gave me a small book about science in the bible. One of its lines of reasoning was that "carbon dating is imprecise, therefore we must discount all science based on it. There is no need for carbon dating, because the chronology presented by the bible is perfect." It used this argument to disprove the notion that dinosaurs lived many millions years ago -- a figure implied by "bad" carbon dating, when the world is proven to be just 6000 years old.
Fundamentalist christians reason that, because Science cannot put precise numbers on anything (see above), it can't be true. Better believe the bible, which is obviously very precise about everything.
Fundamentalist christians reason that, because Science cannot put precise numbers on anything (see above), it can't be true. Better believe the bible, which is obviously very precise about everything.
Fundamentalist reality deniers often clutch at straw when attempting rebuttals. It's also interesting the way Global Warming more closely resembles a religion or cult than science. One has the Bible, the other has IPCC Annual Reports. The gospels according to science, primarily WG1 contain some of the answers I'm after, but also a lot of uncertainties.
Then comes the more cult-like behavior, so a blind faith that the Climate is angry, and must be appeased by generous tithes, or buying carbon indulgences to pay for our sins. Pay $100bn a year, or you'll feel very very slightly warmer. It's also interesting that pretty much every time I ask these questions, nobody can provide any specific answers, even though they are fairly easy to find. One is cited in a work by James Hansen, previously director of NASA GISS and was the basis of one of their climate models.. Which was also falisified a couple of decades ago. But that's again evidence of cult-like behaviour, and blind faith in models, even when reality (ie observations) falsify them.
But it's also one of those areas NASA can easily afford to lose. Helping design, build and launch Earth observation satellites is arguably core NASA business. Producing fake Earth temperature maps isn't.
I can't remember the last time I looked at an IPCC annual report. They're far from the only document about climate change. Even if you don't want to believe science reports, talk to older people who have knowledge of long term weather patterns in their area (farmers, (glider) pilots, foresters) and you'll find basically all of them saying that climate HAS been changing. Rapidly. Yes, climate changed naturally in the past, yes climate will change in the future. No we're not "coming out of an ice age, we're well past the "coming out" phase and on top of that we can see from lots and lots of different methods (tree rings, ice cores, fossil records and probably dozens of others that I don't know about because I'm not a climate scientist) that the rate of change that we're seeing now is unprecedented. We're seeing that the amount of CO2 relative to the global mean temperature is extremely high. Higher than it's ever been in any record we've been able to find.
As to "fake earth temperature maps".... That's not NASA doing it, that's NASA designing, building and launching Earth observation sattelites in cooperation with agencies like NOAA precisely because it's their core businesses. Those "fake" earth temperate maps nearly always come with a logo of some other agencies right alongside the NASA logo, precisely because NASA is just gathering the data which is then analyzed and published by other agencies.
As to your bullshit about "carbon indulgences".... yeah, the concluding is that excess emissions of greenhouse gasses (this is NOT just about CO2) are bad. One of the ways we've agreed to regulate this is through "carbon taxes". Extra tax income for the states, incentive for companies to reduce their emissions (and this ONLY applies to large companies, you as the consumer will not even notice). Is this a perfect system? Absolutely not, it's getting screwed and frauded and exploited up the wazoo. But since people like you don't want to see reason, it's the best we can do right now.
No we're not "coming out of an ice age, we're well past the "coming out" phase and on top of that we can see from lots and lots of different methods (tree rings, ice cores, fossil records and probably dozens of others that I don't know about because I'm not a climate scientist) that the rate of change that we're seeing now is unprecedented.
You're not a geologist either and there's debate around whether we've hit mid-interglacial, or not. Claims of 'unprecendented' are obviously limited by available evidence, along with large amounts of faith that tree rings make excellent thermometers. It should be clear that they don't, ie they don't show the LIA or MWP, despite those being well-documented. But of course you need to deny those to fit CO2 dogma, and that Global Warming isn't unprecedented, but expected following the end of the LIA. See also-
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/in-bad-faith
Here, the Court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Dr. Mann, through [his lawyers] Mr. Fontaine and Mr. Williams, acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court regarding damages stemming from loss of grant funding... They each knowingly made a false statement of fact to the Court and Dr. Mann knowingly participated in the falsehood, endeavoring to make the strongest case possible even if it required using erroneous and misleading information.
Which will sound depressingly familiar to anyone that knows how Michael Mann created his (in)famous Hockey Stick..
As to "fake earth temperature maps".... That's not NASA doing it, that's NASA designing, building and launching Earth observation sattelites in cooperation with agencies like NOAA precisely because it's their core businesses.
No, but again you seem rather misinformed-
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Or in this case, intentionally misinformed because NASA creates hotspots where they don't have any instruments or observations. So they just make up the angry red parts of their heat maps. It is arguably not their core business, so could easily be folded into NOAA. Plus the lease on GISS's NYC building wasn't renewed before Trump took office..
Extra tax income for the states, incentive for companies to reduce their emissions (and this ONLY applies to large companies, you as the consumer will not even notice)
Economics obviously isn't your strong point either. So those companies will include things like schools & hospitals because they're large energy users. It'll also include food producers, factories, retailers etc etc because energy is an input cost to everything. But as you rightly say, it does make a lot of money for fraudsters and carbon traders, who've discovered that if you can convince gullible politicians, you really can tax thin air. Net Zero will make net zero difference to either CO2 or temperature, but it will make a few people a lot of money.. at the cost to the wider economy and public.
All of this seems to boil down to you claiming we need better instrumentation. Sounds good. Why are you so opposed to that?
Where do you get that idea from? One of the best things about the Global Warming hype has been funding for better instrumentation, but the issue is whether that money has been spent wisely. So as an example-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_program#History
In 1989, this transition had not been fully completed when NOAA's funding for the Landsat program was due to run out (NOAA had not requested any funding, and U.S. Congress had appropriated only six months of funding for the fiscal year) and NOAA directed that Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 be shut down.
Carter transferred Landsat ops from NASA to NOAA, NOAA didn't seem to want it, Congress took a while to figure out the product is actually very useful. Then more politics around budgets and paying for data, ie USGS, Department of Agriculture, forestry etc. And then there's the MSS, or Multi-Spectral Scanner which has grown from sensing 4 wavebands to 11, and maybe 26, if Landsat Next survives bugdet cuts/re-allocation. Or there's this constellation-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-train_(satellite_constellation)
Which is a variety of satellites owned/operated by different agencies from different nations, and includes instruments like this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory_2
Specifically to measure atmospheric CO2 concentrations. All of which have shown things like a 'greening of the Earth' in response to elevated CO2 and temperatures, which correlates with longer-term ice core studies that have shown CO2 lags temperature, and therefore can't be causation. Especially when natural CO2 emissions massively exceed human, which is back to the pointlessness of Net Zero because that will have no measurable effect on global CO2 levels, or temperatures.
Conversely, studies have shown surface temperature records, ie weather stations have been badly contaminated by poor siting and maintenance and shouldn't be relied on for climatology work. So the UK's stations mostly fall far below WMO standards, so +/-5C accuracy for most of them. Then localised anomalys, like the Met Office claiming 'record temperatures' measuring jets taking off, or most recently an April temperature 'record' from St James's Park-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/when-you-thought-the-met-office-could-not-get-any-more-dishonest/
Where the weather station was surrounded by barriers, portaloos and generators. That 'record' was quietly corrected after the site was clearly shown to be unreliable. Which then gets into data management, so 24.5C was measured, but contaminated, so how that should be reflected in data product. Any self-respecting scientists or engineer knows you should never 'adjust' your data, yet climate 'scientists' routinely do, which makes products like NASA GISS's temperature anomaly maps unreliable.
Which is kind of the dilema for real science vs climate 'science'. Climate 'science' pretends to show temperature anomalies in places where they have no empirical data, and it's purely synthetic, ie made up. Then the anomalies are calculated from a baseline of 1850, where there were even fewer reliable observations. Pile error on error and you get 'unprecedented' Global Warming, Greta, and people supergluing themselves to roads or throwing soup at paintings. Satellite records are arguably more reliable, but obviously shorter, and generally don't show any 'climate crisis'.
> . But when McDonalds was given the go-ahead to build a restaurant, it went from bare dirt to serving burgers in 3-4 months. Imagine THAT!!!
How many years is that McDonald's construction designed to be usable to them? And once of no interest to Ronald, how usable will it be for any other use?
The USA is littered with buildings made for & by the commercial sector that are designed to be quick to build and quick to be abandoned - particularly seen with decrepit malls.
Not saying that Navy building could not have been faster, but Officer's Quarters built in 3-4 months would be of questionable quality.
> A private space station would not be limited by "international diversity" [i.e. one part run by USA, another by Russia, another by EU, etc.] but WOULD be open to all nations. Most likely it would use less expensive construction than "a government build", be more repairable, and modular enough to swap things out
The ISS *is* modular - and the internationals co-operation is a major reason *why*. It has been reconfigured multiple times, because it is modular.
Less expensive? Well, after decades of experience, engineering and science learnt from the ISS, a new design may well be less expensive and easier to assemble. By leveraging the ISS experience.
"b) Artemis' design is way too expensive and Elon is already proving the private sector CAN do it better"
Yes, Artemis is too expensive and could be dialed back to missions and mission architectures that are easier to achieve. Elon is not proving anything and is on a path the be the hard limit to getting people on the moon again as his Starships blow up one by one.
"Back when I was in the Navy, they spent YEARS working on the new officer's barracks at the Sub base, and had not even finished it when I left. But when McDonalds was given the go-ahead to build a restaurant, it went from bare dirt to serving burgers in 3-4 months. Imagine THAT!!! I think the private sector CAN do it better and it makes sense to DO SO *WITHOUT* "old style" COST OVERRUN-DRIVEN BUREAUCRATIC *FOREVER*-CONTRACTS - INCLUDING cost-inefficient development in-house BY NASA."
Two extremes, government projects and McD's prowess at throwing up "restaurants". Building anything on a military base is mired in approvals, regulations and contracting requirements all meant to protect the taxpayer from being ripped off, not accomplishing anything which makes one wonder how that goes with the first part. Military bases are Federal properties that fall under Federal building codes while the builder will be more up to date on State building codes in most cases and that leads to conflicts. Getting paid on government contracts can be difficult and subject to delays due to Congress not passing budgets which will mean plenty of starts and stops. Any changes once construction starts can also lead to months of delays to get everything re-approved.
McD's doesn't design a bespoke building for each location. They have a file of reference designs where everything is done. The plans are meticulous, the structural engineering is done by licensed engineers and all stamped along with with State approvals. They know where every electrical outlet and piece of plumbing will be down to the CM. The orders will be placed for all of the appliances and scheduled for delivery on specific dates. They also don't have to contend with government contracts. The corporation owns the land and leases it to the franchisee so they also aren't subject to leases and third party owner demands. I won't eat their, but I admire their workflow.
The people that make money rehabbing homes are partly successful due to going in with a fully formulated plan from the outset and sticking to that plan. It makes scheduling much easier, getting materials ordered and delivered more certain and avoiding the need to re-submit plans to get additional permits for the changes. If the rule is to only make changes when circumstances for it, mission creep has a harder time sticking its nose in.
I don't know why I'm getting downvotes. McDonalds have developed artificial gravity for their restaurants, as cited above, and Elon is a bigger clown than Ronald so surely he can put it in his space station by next year* **,
*date of next year may vary, **space station may still be on earth at that time
c) Climate change nonsense is NOT "useful science"
Easy to say that shite, you (many of us) most probably will not live to see the worst of the catastrophe unfolding. We could be working to create pragmatic, sustainable solutions but, yeah, easier to just ignore the problem and keep hating on Greta and the lefties or whoever...
Easy to say that shite, you (many of us) most probably will not live to see the worst of the catastrophe unfolding.
Indeed. Anyone in the US north of 38 degrees will probably see their property prices devalued-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_ice_sheet
We could be working to create pragmatic, sustainable solutions but, yeah, easier to just ignore the problem and keep hating on Greta and the lefties or whoever...
Seems reasonable, after all they're usually the ones screaming that the sky is falling. Or lobbying for solutions that aren't pragmatic, sustainable or affordable. See Spain and their power outage for more info. Which is also a budget and priority issue. Our ancestors understood why wind & solar weren't reliable forms of energy. So cut funding for that garbage and invest it instead in nuclear reseach and building power stations instead. The US has the DoE for that after all.
This post has been deleted by its author
Indeed, it sure looks like President Musk got everything he could have dreamed of from his mouthpiece puppet, short of being able to "disappear" anyone that makes fun of him or still calls it Twitter... Also, who genuinely believes he's actually going to give up all the powers of the proxy presidency?
In terms of overall costings and assuming DOGE's figures are correct, DOGE has cost the US at least $10-20 billion a year.
So the same or more money spent per year, for far less actual stuff - an abject failure.
However, we already know their figures are wildly incorrect, and a lot of the things cut were actually bringing in a lot of revenue - directly and indirectly. So in reality, DOGE is worse than the estimates.
What it has succeeded in doing is trashing all the departments who were investigating Musk's various business ventures. I'm sure that is entirely a coincidence.
"DOGE has cost the US at least $10-20 billion a year."
I expect that's only the start. Many things can be loped of with no immediate effects and wind up costing far more down the road. It's the same as putting off home repairs, not seeing the doctor/dentist at the first indication of an issue, and so forth.
I keep banging on about bridges, but there has been issues with a few in the last year. When they break or suddenly need to be closed due to a serious structural deficiency, that's a huge hit to GDP. It's better to catch emerging problems as soon as possible and make plans for rerouting traffic if it will mean limiting traffic or taking the bridge out of service all together. Getting ahead of problems means regular inspections and evaluations. All of the bridges aren't going to collapse in the next year so one could dis-employ all of the inspectors and crow about the savings only up to the point where there is an issue. Once there are issues, I expect there will be a big push to inspect bridges again with the result that many will be found to be in danger of failing and the cost will be many times what it would have been before the cuts.
If this guy were any more short sighted he'd need glasses on the back of his head. At least his hair wouldn't get in the way. And while we are at it why don't we cut 90% of his golf budget. I will give him 10% to get some time to rest and relax between the exhausting raving sycophant cabinet meetings and rallies, ever expanding corruption activities, and of course the toilet tweeting at all hours.
These programmes take years and yes they do cost an absolute arm and leg. Cancelling stuff now means potentially all previous spend is now wasted and there are companies across the globe that are impacted, given how the world's space agencies work together on virtually everything. Certainly US, Europe and Japan do, with others in strong support. Yes Boeing are making a hash of many things right now, likely based on old habits and the much-reported influence of C suite who court business at the expense of engineering and quality. And yes SpaceX are the golden boys and girls getting stuff done. But these sort of decision s should be thought about and worked through and not just 'oh we'll cut this shall we?'.
How about someone calls social services and get them to put him under a protective custodial order in a secure care facility where he can be kept away from cable news, social media and anything else that gets him over excited and too worked up
I suspect that on balance, Vance is less bad than Trump.
My impression is that Vance's main weakness is that he lacks character and will change his stated views based on what seems expedient.
But unfortunately we're in a situation where that's less bad (IMHO) than the sitting president.
What was that thing the orange one did during his last term in office ? I think it was that he created something new, well merged a lot of existing stuff together and called it something new. What was it called, was it "United States Sea Force", no that does not sound right, maybe it was "United States Land Force" no that is not it either, and it is not "United States Air Force". I'll eventually think of it when I'm not thinking about it.For now I'll talk about something else and maybe it will pop into my head.
The funding for NASA always reminds me of their history backwards:
A tiny space agency with no ability to self launch anything into orbit.
A medium space agency with their own space crafts to launch objects into low earth orbit.
A large space agency who landed the first humans on the moon!
The space force is just so the airforce and Navy don't fight over who gets to run GPS - the Navy invented it but the USAF claimed it went up and was therefore theirs.
>A tiny space agency with no ability to self launch anything into orbit.
They just need some DEI DIE, specifically die Raketenwissenschaftleren
>A medium space agency with their own space crafts to launch objects into low earth orbit.
Were NASA ever building their own space craft? The Redstone arsenal days were before NASA and the Mercury->Apollo era rocket hardware was built by the military-industrial complex
>A large space agency who landed the first humans on the moon!
That was probably it's downfall. Creating a giant crash "Manhattan Project" and then being left with a large sprawling agency with too many sites and a need to pork barrel and politic to keep it running. leading to a search for a big enough project to justify all this ie. the Space Shuttle
From a scientific point of view getting rid of SLS, Artemis and pointless 'square jawed test pilots" back to the moon (even if this time they are female/black/marines or other minorities) - would leave money to spend on actual science. Of course it won't because the purpose of NASA is to prop up Boeing / Lockeed-Martin / Northrop-Gruman
The first few Artemis missions will be needed to pave the way for followup missions by the private sector. Artemis can go away afterwards. Elon's chopstick rocket catcher and matching "space truck" should be ready by then. That may be why Artemis goes away, being replaced by Starship 1 at lower cost.
And Bezos could get into the game, too. Amazon Lunar deliveries. Heh.
You KNOW the next steps may shift to military "Space Force" missions, separate from private sector RESEARCH and TOURISM missions.
"Elon's" (not actually Elon's) Starship is so far a boondoggle and whether it's actually ever going to fly with useful payloads is still very much an open question. If the people in charge don't realize that you can't do frequency response tests for potentially destructive oscillations of a body in free-flight by doing thrust variations on a test article clamped down to a launch mount from the thrust structure (like they did between OFT-7 and OFT-8) then I hold seriously little hope they'll make it to orbit with Starship. Just assuming that it's going to work is a seriously bad idea. An even worse idea than SLS was or is.
"If the people in charge don't realize that you can't do frequency response tests for potentially destructive oscillations of a body in free-flight by doing thrust variations on a test article clamped down to a launch mount from the thrust structure (like they did between OFT-7 and OFT-8) then I hold seriously little hope they'll make it to orbit with Starship. "
It's worse than that. So far, Starships have been "test articles" and not built up prototypes so any resonance testing will go right out of the window once the internals have been changed. It's also not terribly difficult to simulate. Not easy, but 'easier' than full launches. I've worked on vibration issues with rocket landers and much of the worst things can be simulated and remedied with more spotted in clamped down testing as well as with shaker mounts. Flight is the ultimate test but by then, the low hanging fruit should have been dealt with.
"would leave money to spend on actual science."
NASA is all about science. The Apollo missions were a lot of nationalistic D-waving, but science did ride along. Look up Charles Walker and his electrophoresis experiments on Shuttle. By being able to perform the experiments in 0G, it made it possible to bring the process back down to Earth as they then knew how gravity was affecting things. We know that humans do very poorly in 0G over extended periods of time, but how about 1/6G? None of the Apollo astronauts were on the moon long enough to get any meaningful results. Just doing the science and engineering to sort out how to keep people alive away from Earth leads to advances in sanitation, nutrition and overall health. The only real way to see if those things work is to do them. Debate how many eggs are in the nest as much as you like, but to really know if your assumptions are correct means climbing the tree.
From that:
"Johnson: In September of ’85 Ortho Pharmaceutical had backed out of the CFES because they could do it cheaper without the space travel."
It does rather look like a conclusion that could have been reached without actually going there. There's a lot of scientific work that can be done by NASA but the costs of getting materials up there and the product back down is going to make processing in space difficult to impossible for economical manufacturing.
"A quick search produces nothing more informative than I'd see on a glossy marketing brochure. What was the actual outcome?"
I'll have to see if I have a copy of the paper. The gist was that once it was known how gravity was affecting some function of proteins, it could be compensated for while doing the work on Earth. I talked to him some time ago so my memory is down to a rough summary and an impression of it being a good thing to be doing science off of the planet. It's still a big question if engineering will be viable off-planet. There will need to be a very high-margin, high-value application to lead the building of orbital or lunar production. Once that investment is done, there could be other things worth doing that don't have as much return since a lot of the risk will be covered.
"A tiny space agency with no ability to self launch anything into orbit.
A medium space agency with their own space crafts to launch objects into low earth orbit.
A large space agency who landed the first humans on the moon!"
NASA doesn't build rockets. They build some payloads to go on rockets, but even many of those are designed by NASA and partners and put out to bid. The Saturn V was an amalgamation of sections built by several prime contractors and loads of sub-contractors with NASA waving the baton. The requirements for a manned lunar mission are so unique that no private company is building anything that can just be ordered through a web site. Before Mir was de-orbited, there was some interest in a private consortium to purchase it that all fell through. Mir was very used so it would have been very questionable whether it could have been useful anyway. I had a nice interview with Shannon Lucid and got to ask her about her time on Mir. I just sum up with "very Soviet".
NASA's business is knowledge about space, aircraft and the environment. People often fail to remember they do research in atmospheric flight. It has its plusses and minuses, but on the whole is a really amazing organization. The scientific knowledge they publish every year furthers mankind's progress in so many ways. I was watching a documentary about Earth's ecosystem and they showcased some incredible data NASA had been gathering that scientists make much more accurate estimations of the mass of trees and vegetation across the whole globe. Beyond just doing pure science with that sort of technology, it's immediately useful for agriculture that's used to feed the every growing number of busy breeders and be able to sort out if planting a whole bunch of new trees can offset the clearing of forests.
"A tiny space agency with no ability to self launch anything into orbit."
-A tiny aeronautics agency, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Advisory_Committee_for_Aeronautics
Cancelling the already underfunded aviation-projects of NASA is also a big mistake.
Parts of aviation (nope, not the airliners, but in some years the commuters) are already transitioning to electric flight, and there are good reasons to do so which have nothing to do with "just stop oil".
This is an area where "blue sky" research performed now can save years of time and wads of cash in the future.
However, it is not unsurprising, since petty vengeance seems to be the secondary goal of this administrations after the first directive, which is to transfer as much wealth and power as possible inot one#s private little hands.
These days, we often forget that NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Back before von Braun, it was NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. It developed most of the classic aerofoils used for the wings of WWII allied aircraft. It launched the X-planes program to usher in the supersonic era. Only in 1958 did its name change to reflect the shift in big-budget poster children, but it still maintains four active aeronautics research centres. It flies the X-57 electric propulsion research plane, as well as crossing swords with DARPA over secret military tech such as stealth.
The slide from grace of its space program, and consequent rise of the Mad Musk, looks outwardly to be down to the incompetence and greed of the Boeing Beancounter Corporation, which NASA inherited as a major supplier from the old Boeing aerospace outfit. But there is an underlying sea change in that NASA is fundamentally a research organization; its space operations grew an unintended dimension as a commercial supplier of launch services, and this is overdue for passing back to the commercial sector. Where the Boeing Beancounter Corporation fucked up, SpaceX and Blue Origin are stepping up, with Stratolaunch and a few other outsiders also in the race.
The planned budget cut does reflect this return to the day job, but of course the POTUS axe gets muddled up with it all.
" its space operations grew an unintended dimension as a commercial supplier of launch services, "
Where are they doing this?
NASA does have rideshare missions that allow university researchers a chance to get payloads flown with the costs subsidized, but they don't launch private satellites for commercial enterprises.
Stratolaunch seems to be focused on hypersonic atmospheric craft right now. They bought Virgin Orbit's modified 747 rocket launch aircraft, but returned the rocket attachment pod back to the stock aircraft configuration and, as far as I know, mostly just sits at the Mojave Spaceport just like the L-1011 "Stargazer" that launches the Pegasus rocket.
Not are, used to. Commercial payloads increasingly hitched a ride on NASA-driven Atlas and Shuttle launches, paying their way alongside the science research and other NASA mission payloads. We are still living through the fallout (sic) from the ending of that era.
Stratolaunch still want to do horizontal-to-space. But it's not as easy as it looks and they are having to build up to it in less ambitious steps, serving whatever markets they can catch along the way. This is precisely what makes them an outsider in the space race. (In passing, the mega-bird has a converted 747 flight system in each fuselage, so I suppose expanding the range of sizes on offer, without having to maintain a new flight system, must have seemed like a good idea at the time.)
"(In passing, the mega-bird has a converted 747 flight system in each fuselage, so I suppose expanding the range of sizes on offer, without having to maintain a new flight system, must have seemed like a good idea at the time.)"
Roc, Birdzilla or Stratosaurus Rex does incorporate parts from a couple of 747's, but the fuselage the parts went into was build by Scaled Composites. The market for air-launched rockets has really dropped to around nothing. Just down the road from the Mojave Spaceport is Edwards Air Force Base where the B-52 that launched the X-15 is parked outside the north gate. SpaceShip One and Two, Pegasus and Stratolaunch are all Burt Rutan projects, at least initially. Virgin Orbit was based at Mojave, but they are gone now. I can't recall the last time Pegasus was launched. The L-1011 carrier aircraft is the last one flying (if it still is).
I forgot that NASA was selling experiment space on Shuttle. Selling rideshare space is more about spreading the cost, but NASA also has programs for non-commercial research projects to fly on launches where there's plenty of spare margin. While NASA flies things on ULA rockets, ULA is a private entity.
Then you need to brush up on your Allied aircraft designs. The crop of NACA aerofoils which arrived in the early 1930s were widely adopted by British and other planemakers.
Just one example, here is a paper discussing the historical adoption of NACA sections on the obscure little Supermarine Spitfire flop that you probably never heard of:
https://www.aerosociety.com/media/4953/the-aerodynamics-of-the-spitfire.pdf
I predicted MSR would be scuttled and here we are. The program was already running on its last legs but has now finally been laid to rest.
The insistence of NASA to continue with its convoluted and complex MSR architecture with many single points of failure and its inability to make key decisions in a timely fashion have made this the only reasonable outcome for the project.
I believe there's a very real chance Musk will succeed. I mean, who would've thought his "chopsticks" landing of the Super Heavy would work. When I saw the animations about a decade ago I shrugged and thought "I believe it when I see it!"
I'm therefore unwilling to discount anything Musk says. He may not succeed in his proposed timeline but in the end there's a real possibility he will.
His only failure was Full Self Driving, which I blame on his inability to oversee the complexity of the problem he's trying to solve. Driving is a complex task which even humans with 1 billion neuron brains have trouble dealing with. Although the Grand Challenge in 2005 showed you could solve it for a limited scope dealing with the real world conditions is quite another matter.
"I believe there's a very real chance Musk will succeed. I mean, who would've thought his "chopsticks" landing of the Super Heavy would work."
Rocket engineers believed it could be done. A precision landing on landing legs is the same thing. It's only different that the rocket winds up hanging on a couple of pegs rather than on it's feet.
A company I worked for talked around a launch/landing cradle so we could eliminate the mass of the landing legs. We could land very precisely so it was possible, but, in the end, the added risk of losing a vehicle if we needed to abort was more expensive.
Consider what will happen when a tower is damaged in the midst of something like SpaceX's HLS mission architecture. If they've sent 18 of 20 tankers to fill up an orbital fuel depot, that is going to mean a reduced flight schedule to complete the process meaning more flights to compensate for boil-off. Instead of 2 flights to go, it might mean 4-5 and then push an entire timeline back a lot for all elements. Taking a hit on the up mass by adding landing gear means a very simple landing arrangement (concrete pad) where it would be simple to have backup pads.
"Although the Grand Challenge in 2005 showed you could solve it for a limited scope dealing with the real world conditions is quite another matter."
I covered the DARPA Grand Challenge and the Urban Challenge as a journalist and got the chance to talk with the teams. The complexity of getting a machine to drive autonomously is more difficult than people think. It's why I'm more a proponent of PRT. A small vehicle on a dedicated roadway is orders of magnitude less complex of a problem. In combination with trains and trams, PRT is the last bit of a circulatory system for a big city other than walking the last 100m to a destination. I sort of see why the military would want autonomous vehicles, but soldiers aren't the highest paid people in the world and generally considered as pawns so making the vehicles more expensive doesn't seem like a good move. An autonomous vehicle can't be given KP when it reaches its destination.
This post has been deleted by its author
There is a reason that there are currently no commerical space stations in operation. It's not that they cant be built. It's not that they need a nation size budget to develop. It's that they are not economically viable. The international space station, even with the odd paying tourist, even if it started charging more for the science payloads, is not and will never be a commercial success.
So get rid of the ISS, and there will be no western follow up to conduct that critical zero gravity science. China will get the development fruits of their Space Station, another chance for them to jump ahead in the science game.
I dont mind the idea of handing off the majority of launch services to private companies, BUT if you strip the NASA budget, a) NASA wont have anything to launch, so that doesnt help the commercial companies, and b) so many of the launches from the commerical companies are done under contract (i.e paid) or subsidised by NASA. Strip the NASA budget and who will pay for those American commercial launches?
The EU has it's own launchers in Ariane and Vega. They also have a number of smaller start-up's fighting for the low mass range. So they wont be going to the American launch companies. The Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Russians all have their own launchers. Who else is out there wanting to make regular launches? And considering the politics involved at the moment, if you had something to launch, would you want to be associated with Musk and hence SpaceX?
This seems a great, yet convuluted way to kill off the American Space dream, all in the name of ... progress? (Never ask which way the country is going, Marching in to Hell is still making progress in a direction...)
Interesting that India is exploring cooperative space initiatives with both the UK and the EU.
I wonder what the probability is that a joint Eurindian outfit might hijack the ISS (or its successor) in due course, once the dollars have de-orbited? Or will we be invaded by Boltzmann brains first?
> joint Eurindian outfit might hijack the ISS
Put together a proposal to move the ISS out of its orbit*, carefully priced to underbid whoever the US is going to pay for a deorbit.
Take the US cash and put in some extra dosh, then send the mission to *raise* the ISS and use it as the basis for the new station (some of the systems are a bit old and - well, not rusty, but...).
Otherwise, if we don't get the USA to pay to take it off their hands, you know that (especially if the administration then is anything like it is now) they'll call it stealing (or an act of piracy or even war) :-(
* Note the wording here
Wouldn't it be salvage by analogy with a ship abandoned on the high seas?
Before all the Musk and Bezos cowboys (or buccaneers) head off into the wild west of space it might be an idea to establish some legal framework over such issues.
Can expect SFA from the US which frequently and hypocritically invokes the UN Law of Sea despite never being a signatory but Trumpocrisy blatantly reneges even on those agreements where the US was the originatory signatory.
I would not be particularly surprised if the current maladministration were to give the UN the heave-ho from New York.
"salvaging" the ISS is pointless. Most of it's solar panels are old and tired with reduced output (they're in the process of installing "overlay" panels on top of the existing ones to supplement power generation for the remainder of the lifetime) and especially the Russian section is full of cracks and leaks that are slowly getting worse over time. At minimum you're going to have to replace all of the Russian segment and the oldest US segments, which basically amounts to on orbit disassembly of the ISS anyway. By the time you're done you'll have so little ISS left and done so much work that it's cheaper, easier and faster to just launch new space station segments and create your own space station. It's sad but the ISS really is just approaching the end of it's lifetime.
"Most of it's solar panels are old and tired with reduced output "
Just about every time somebody does an EVA for some task, they find more micrometeorite impacts/holes in things. There's just no way to patch all of that so it's left unless it's creating a big problem. A small air leak here, a tiny ammonia leak there can be compensated for until the cumulative effect is too much or somebody is going to be in the vicinity anyway so they might as well slap on a patch. The solar panels are so far out and with no way to effect a repair will just become worse over time. I recall that some have been replaced with the old panels being sent back down meteorically to be rendered back to elemental form and redeposited on the planet. As they roll out like a window shade, I'm trying to imagine how they'd overlay existing ones and how that's preferable to replacement.
Interesting that India is exploring cooperative space initiatives with both the UK and the EU.
On China, Scott Manley's latest update video mentioned a Chinese mission to collect samples from the Moon, which will be shared with the UK. They were also due to be shared with a US university, but I guess they won't have the budget to pay the import tariff. China also launched new crew to their space station, which now has a fish tank. Britain may want to contribute towards growing spuds in space so we can give future astronauts fresh fish & chips.
But such is space politics. Come 2030, there might be a big splash and the ISS is no more, but there might be a BRICS station instead. It's a big club, and we're not really part of it.
"There is a reason that there are currently no commerical space stations in operation. It's not that they cant be built. It's not that they need a nation size budget to develop. It's that they are not economically viable."
There's a cart/horse dilemma too. There could be a hypothesis that growing crystals for a new type of semiconductor can be done and have good yields in reduced gravity. Until the research can be done, it would be impossible to get a corporate BoD to spend tens of billions on the basic research to develop the idea. Products and processes with the potential for large payoffs will be the low hanging fruit, but the basic research will have to be done first. If NASA and related agencies do the science and publish the data, private companies can take if from there to determine what it would take to turn those curiosities into saleable products. I'm not suggesting that NASA do directed research but continue with doing stuff that's usually classed as "pure science". They did a lot of this in the 1950's with fuel/oxidizer combinations and that's paid off in spades over the decades. A lot of what they tried turned out to be dead ends, but that's meant that countless credits have could have been wasted by private industry (who don't publish their findings), weren't.
I'd love to see a future where space agencies pave the way to something like a lunar outpost and they eventually become a tenant of a commercial station booking space to continue doing science without having to support all of the infrastructure that might be subject to abandonment caused by one cycle of anti-science politicians.
Yeah, even a commercial space station is going to need big government contracts to make it anywhere close to paying it's own way, and if NASA doesn't have the budget for that, it won't happen. I think the most likely commercial successor to the ISS is/was planning to start by boot-strapping off a still flying ISS. I don't think they will be ready with crew-rated modules by the time the ISS is de-orbited (and for the poster above, Mush won that contract, a modified Dragon capsule will attach and then de-orbit the ISS). Starting from scratch with a brand new modular space station needs a at least a life support module to be sent up first, then the various other modules, solar panels etc. It sounds easy, but it's in space, so it's hard. And without gov. level funding, well, a few tourists and maybe a couple of private researchers are not going to cover the costs.
It's interesting watching what the Chinese are up to on their space station. The whole thing just looks neater, tidier, more up to date and the recent crop growing experiments seem to be of an order of magnitude more than the ISS has ever done. They seem to be keeping much if their work close to their chests, but what little comes out looks impressive. By the time the ISS is de orbited, China will be leaps and bounds ahead of any other space station since they are still properly funding theirs.
"Yeah, even a commercial space station is going to need big government contracts to make it anywhere close to paying it's own way, "
For there to be any sort of commercial space station, there has to be a good business reason for it. It's too expensive to do a "build it and they will come". Another question is that without something like Shuttle, how does one get built that won't be seriously constrained in it's design. Oh yeah, sure, Starship, but that's not a functional platform so it's another couple levels of waiting/planning on the project timeline that is highly variable. There is another heavy lift to space craft that's been teased, but it's only just in the CGI rendering stage, so don't hold your breath. They need to do a lot of maths yet to see if it would have enough of a market to even begin looking at scale models and subsystems.
Actually didn’t Elon once claim that "he would like to die on Mars, just not on arrival”?
Realistically though, despite all the grandiose claims, we are decades away from a crewed landing on Mars - the technology required to do this, although theoretically possible, simply doesn’t exist.
What ‘may’ be achievable is a crewed ‘flyby’ of Mars, the trip will take some 18 months, the opportunity to do this happens every 15 years or so (the next opportunity is in late 2032), and could allow the US to make the claim that they have ‘sent a Man to Mars’. Throw enough money at it at 2032 is just about possible.
Won’t happen of course, especially in light of the latest announcement.
"What ‘may’ be achievable is a crewed ‘flyby’ of Mars, the trip will take some 18 months, the opportunity to do this happens every 15 years or so (the next opportunity is in late 2032), and could allow the US to make the claim that they have ‘sent a Man to Mars’. Throw enough money at it at 2032 is just about possible."
I'd get off my lazy backside and vigorously campaign against that sort of mission. It's completely pointless, a huge risk and if all goes well, there'd be a crew coming back to Earth that will have been disinheirited by Earth's gravity. A year on ISS severely impacts the health of astronauts and I believe that the degradation isn't linear over time so 18 months in 0G is many times worse than 12. I'll come back and post a link if I see the study again. The error bars are still pretty wide since there isn't an ISO standard human that can be used to control the variables.
Elon Musk will get them when he comes back from Mars.
Hell no! I don't think anyone absolutely without exception once they have Mad Ming back on Mongo are going to take the slightest chance of his returning.
Vulture headline 2035, "MRM cancelled" (with extreme prejudice.) Cathedral bells tolling.
Downvoted because you know better!
There is science in everything, if you look for it, even spanking... hand, paddles, thin canes, thick canes, all have different physical effects and therefore feel different.
Can’t argue with your implied analysis of Trump’s intellectual capabilities (or lack of), and the voters who put him in power - both are a sad reflection of the state of the US education system.
Trump is not really the source of all this, he's just a rather vain person with a short attention span who is really easily flattered. There's a long term plan to all this, a method in the madness as it were. It pops up from time to time as "Project2025" or "Blueprint for America" or whatever but its normally been held back by the checks and balances in the system. These have been undermined before and its often taken considerable effort (and resources) to right the balance. I'm not optimistic that we'll get away with this cycle that easily -- it might be true that politically Trump and his cronies are toast but they've got plenty of time to cause permanent damage to our economy and political system.
From a foreigner's perspective I'd just say that our loss is your gain. Our retreat into isolationism offers many global opportunities but only to those who recognize that the role of 'ally' or even 'special relationship' is really just 'colonial lackey' -- continuing to hitch your star to us just means you'll share our fate while always being the junior partner, just a sort of English speaking Puerto Rico at best. In particular there is absolutely nothing to be gained from trying to 'contain' countries like China, you (like us) will have to learn to coexist and compete with them rather than continually trying to bully them. The global order is changing with the Euro (and subsequently) US-centric world -- really a form of Empire -- fading into a more egalitarian model. You either ride the wave or get drowned by it.
"In particular there is absolutely nothing to be gained from trying to 'contain' countries like China,"
I have no interest in containing China, but I do think it would be a jolly good idea to contain its current governance model. I am not alone. There are millions of people in China with a similar view.
[quote] In their place, the space agency is expected to lean on commercial alternatives for future lunar ambitions. [/quote]
and by 'commercial' interests, they mean Phoney Stark ?
or others, ARE there others ?
IF it got built by private funds, they will want to get their money back
and more
so if private is the way forward, make it so that the investment is seen as just that, they put money in, nothing else happens, they get no preferential treatment, and zero returns on their costs
this way it would only be the truly magnanimous amongst them who will come forward, and IMHO the option to build privately will be dead in the water :o)
"IF it got built by private funds, they will want to get their money back"
Somebody would have to come up with a solid business plan that can confidently show how there would be return on investment. This is my argument against Elon going to Mars and why SpaceX will not be doing an IPO and become a publicly listed corporation. Shareholders would be highly unlikely to support the expenditure. A private company helmed by a person that's constructed it in such a way that they have a super-majority of control can dream of people on Mars and spend as much of investor money as they like on the endeavor. The shares in SpaceX are held by a small rabid bunch of space nerds such as Steve Jurvetson. Fine, all fine, but random punters buying shares listed on the Stock Exchane are looking for pay back and might have difficulty spelling "space". They WILL know how to join a class action suit suing the company's executives for throwing money at a frivolous project that doesn't have a rational plan for making money. Elon knows this and knows that 'going public' means giving up control. It also means having more contact with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
"Somebody would have to come up with a solid business plan that can confidently show how there would be return on investment......'going public' means giving up control"
Neither statement are absolutely correct. As discussed in another article, Zuck has blown $60bn on his Wankiverse, and that's produced nothing, and clearly didn't have any credible business case. Investors in Meta didn't stop him. Likewise, Elon treated Tesla as his property when bailing our his solar failure, investors didn't mind. The whole AI bubble shows that (as with all bubbles) greed trumps common sense even when there's either no business case, or no credible business case.
Zuck has blown $60bn on his Wankiverse,
Only if he had teamed up with the adult entertainment industry from the get go it might have been more of success although more than just one thing would be sticking out, one supposes.
A nice symmetry the Mars bound greasy eminence on one hand mirrored by the Hawaii bunkered lubricated tumescence on the other.
Shame the fight between those two dolts never eventuated. Could have rivalled ladies' mud wrestling.
These far-right medieval "leaders" (Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro, etc, etc) don't believe in science or scientific thinking, because:
1. They are only interested in money for their own pockets.
2. They are truly ignorant.
3. And more important, science can question them, their lies can be rigorously exposed, or in other words, science can question their fascist/totalitarian/narcissistic/celestial leaderships.
Science and democracy are not perfect, but they are the best we have.
It it sad, but these pseudo-kings + the techno-feudalism of Meta, Google, etc, are too dystopian for this 21st century :-(
"Although Elon Musk – the billionaire SpaceX supremo, DOGE head operative, and President Trump's éminence grease – is ostensibly stepping back from guiding government, this draft budget is particularly good news for him, his rocket biz, and his long-held, under-delivered ambitions to send people to Mars.:"
I don't think this will be good overall for SpaceX either overall. SpaceX gets at least some business from NASA. Also with all the cuts being done and insane economic policy, it will drive the USA into a recession... which will further hurt demand for SpaceX stuff.
Plus political blowback also means what SpaceX offers with not be considered and some contracts have been cancelled... such as a contract to have SpaceX provide internet in remote areas in Northern Ontario in Canada.
And though Musk said he's "stepping back", what he also said was he would still spend 1-2 days a week at DOGEshit... which in my view, is still 1-2 days too many.
"And though Musk said he's "stepping back", what he also said was he would still spend 1-2 days a week at DOGEshit... which in my view, is still 1-2 days too many."
The Tesla fans think he'll be spending the other 5 days at Tesla. The SpaceX fans think he'll be spending the time at SpaceX, The..... you get the idea. Even without rolling in the grass with the doggies, Elon has spread himself paper thin. News articles have taken Elon's words of "stepping back" from Doge to pay more attention to his other ventures as equivalent to being back in the office of Tesla. I think he's more likely to be messing about with X holdings. If he was still interested in cars, he wouldn't have gone into politics (unless the real reason for that was to eliminate the agencies that have been getting in his way).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
