Trump shafts NASA science.

Capt'n Midnight

The Donald in his wisdom has killed of a lot of NASA science and cooperation projects but has kept the port barrels.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/12/nasa_budget_climate_iss_moon/

The agency's department of education, which inspires kids into science and technology careers, will be eliminated. Five climate studies are also axed, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope project is dead, and funding for the International Space Station will be cut off in 2025

Instead the budget is going for "exploration" ie. using the SLS to send humans to the Moon or Mars. And we've heard that tale so many times in the past it's practically meaningless.

There's a bizarre proposal to make the ISS commercially funded.


Thankfully we'll still have the ESA doing climate science, and the Russian part of the ISS is self contained. And China has plans too.

slade_x

I remember the beginnings of this from last year, never expected it to come to fruition.

https://gizmodo.com/destroying-nasas-office-of-education-fails-future-scien-1793345393

But the deepest cut is undoubtedly to NASA’s Office of Education, which would be completely liquidated under the current proposal. The education office, which provides countless scholarships, internships, and work opportunities to young science enthusiasts, is an invaluable resource to educators and students alike. Its Independent Validation and Verification Project (IV&V), for example, invites minority kids interested in STEM careers to partake in a 10-week, resident summer research project at NASA’s IV&V facility West Virginia. The Stennis Space Center’s Astro Camp summer program, which is funded by NASA’s educational department, allows kids to learn from and work with real agency engineers. In an email to Gizmodo, NASA news director at the Stennis Space Center, Valerie Buckingham, said: “At this time, all of the details regarding the future of Astro Camp are not known.”

Despite the educational office’s obvious value, the Trump administration has deemed it a useless expense. While the recent proposal is still a draft, meaning it still has to go through Congress where it’s likely to see significant revisions, this is an extremely disturbing worst-case scenario.

“While this budget no longer funds a formal Office of Education, NASA will............

Grab All Association

I think more money should be invested into the ESA. I believe we can become the world leader in space exploration in a few years if we allocated more funds to the ESA. I’d love to see the ESA launch it’s own manned missions to Mars and it’s own space shuttles instead of hitching rides with the Russians.

mickmackey1

I don't think this should be politicised really. The vast majority of Americans have no interest in space, and the way they vote is in no way influenced by the candidates opinion on the subject. If anything, the Republicans have thrown more money at 'patriotic' space projects than the penny-pinching Democrats.