Trump Admin to Slice NASA in Half and Cancel New Telescopes

[ruet]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by GP6971 (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Daily Beast

So long, space travel. The White House plans to terminate billions of dollars’ worth of ongoing and future National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) missions, effectively cutting the world-renowned scientific agency in half. President Donald Trump’s most recent budget proposal to Congress proposes major reductions that would cut NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion, The Washington Post reported Friday. The SMD is responsible for sponsoring research in several fields: earth science, heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary science, and biological and physical sciences. The astrophysics budget would drop from $1.5 billion to $487 million. The planetary science budget would plunge from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. No telescope other than the extant Hubble and Webb telescopes will be funded, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a groundbreaking instrument in the works that would study distant galaxies and faraway planets. Not all hope is lost, however, as the budget draft is only the first step in the process in which Trump sends Congress a 2026 fiscal year budget request. Congress, which has the “power of the purse,” could still rescue NASA. The Daily Beast has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-to-slice-nasa-in-half/

[wcmagumba]

1. We don't need no stinking NASA...

[PopArtMonkey]

2. My dad worked at NASA in Greenbelt for years.

Worked on the COBE project (Big Bang). He'd be heartbroken to see this happen now.

[lapfog_1]

3. I hate these people with the heat of a 1000 stars

or the heat of the likely Betelgeuse supernova which either already happened or will likely happen in the next 10,000 years.

Punishment for NASA tracking climate change or Mission To Planet Earth ( MTPE ) and the EOS ( Earth Observation System ), both of which I had some responsibility for in the 1990s.

[question everything]

4. No Musk going to Mars?

[Polybius]

6. His SpaceX will still go

But I doubt before 2050.

[Americanme]

5. Don't need NASA if we contract all their work to SpaceX

Elon will make a lot of money.

[GoreWon2000]

7. I'm sure Senator Kelly will fight this

[keroro gunsou]

8. Dear Mr. President...

just because you and that cabal of persons (and i use the term VERY loosely) are in-curious, anti-science dolts of the first magnitude, doesn't mean the rest of us are. Leave NASA alone.

[GP6971]

9. Locking. Dupe of https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143438405