Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/07/congress-moves-to-reject-bulk-of-white-houses-proposed-nasa-cuts/

by DocFeind • 1 year ago

254 222 1 year ago

geuis• 1 year ago

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level.

Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

BlackjackCF• 1 year ago

I just wish Congress or the Supreme Court would show any teeth whatsoever. Right now most of the firings have been happening illegally, despite all of these programs already being budgeted for and funded.

kelnos• 1 year ago

It's not about bravery. This is what Republican members of Congress want. This is what the conservatives in SCOTUS want.

Iwan-Zotow6• 1 year ago

No, it is not

With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

mindslight7• 1 year ago

If the debt is a problem worth addressing, then why did the big ugly spending bill raise the debt by trillions of dollars?

Larrikin• 1 year ago

So why did Congress increase the deficit, they don't care so why should we cut back spending on actually good things.

lumost3• 1 year ago

The US can easily afford its obligations. The problem is that the tax base has shifted into alternative forms of income such as dividends and cap gains which are taxed at lower rates.

It’s a policy choice that these returns are not taxed at comparable rates to income. The trend of nation-wide capital returns vs income is telling.

KPGv2• 1 year ago

With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

It doesn't matter how much debt you have if taking on the debt raises your revenue by more than serving the interest payments.

Imagine telling a corporation they can't borrow money at 3% to grow 15% because "debt is bad." Or telling someone who needs a car to get to work that they should go without a car (and thus not become employed) rather than taking on a car payment because "debt is bad."

And on this front, the US has been doing great (but is currently shooting itself in the foot under the new administration)

unethical_ban3• 1 year ago

We could

  * Not cut taxes on the very wealthy by $4,000,000,000,000 over ten years
  * Not give $500,000,000,000 to military and police expansion in the immediate future
  * Not have one person dictating global trade policy with the US that impacts our relationships and competitiveness for the next 30 years

NASA is not something we should skimp on.

hello_moto• 1 year ago

Tax the wealth of your billionaires my dude.

Their wealth grow unchecked depressing yours.

insane_dreamer3• 1 year ago

sure we can

but instead we're giving a massive tax break to rich people and increasing the military budget by $150B

somenameforme17• 1 year ago

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight ready.

And mind you it's not some amazing technological marvel that's driving these ridiculous costs. It's essentially a really expensive refactoring of the Space Shuttle program to the point that it will be using the literally exact same rs-25 engines.

And you already hit exactly on why they're not being cancelled - there's going to be a very short degree of separation between Congressmen and the people charging absurd costs for simple tech that's being used in this project. To me, this is perhaps the purest embodiment (and reason) for governmental dysfunction, at all levels. It's simple pork and corruption.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y74• 1 year ago

Need some competition to commercial near-monopolization (in the pre-to-mid 2010s when it was funded), some other program, they already funded SLS (which was funded to carry way more payload than FH), let it play out, IMO.

Also, not to say it isn't a time to start acting, if we are another decade out still adding funding to SLS with the current balance sheet, we have major issues.

But $30B over 10Y isn't that crazy when we spend ~$900B a year (with much more in 2026) on defense.

georgeburdell• 1 year ago

Your point was stronger 6 months ago before SpaceX started regressing on their Starship test flights. The U.S. needs to have multiple horses in the race

mjamesaustin• 1 year ago

The real tragedy is that the administration withdrew Jared Isaacman's nomination to be NASA administrator. He had bold plans for modernizing NASA and the experience to lead. But he didn't kiss the ring and instead made comments suggesting NASA's budget shouldn't be eviscerated, so his appointment was torpedoed.

gonzobonzo5• 1 year ago

Manned space flight in generally is a hugely wasteful money sink. It eats up about 50% of NASA's budget, and there's no real reason for it other than "we're putting people into space because we want to put people into space." People vigorously defend these boondoggles, then finally admit they were a huge waste years after the fact (as we've seen with the space shuttle, and as we're now starting to see with the SLS).

throwawaysleep• 1 year ago

SLS is what keeps Elon from having American spaceflight in his own personal vice.

rsynnott• 1 year ago

It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous

Falcon Heavy: Claimed payload to LEO (though it has never done anything like this): 63 tonnes.

SLS: 95t, 105t or 130t depending on version.

These are quite different capabilities.

sandworm1014• 1 year ago

> Senate Launch System

A name also thrown around for shuttle. Do a little digging and a surprising number of shuttle crews had ties to the US congress, either as relatives or who themselves would later become representatives. They even flew a handful of serving reps (ie John Glenn, aged 77). Nasa has always known how to foster relations with political power families.

ApolloFortyNine2• 1 year ago

Just to add to this, somehow the current plan for getting to the moon involves over 15 launches (or 25, the number does seem to vary). With Starship actually having a larger payload than the Saturn V at least to LEO, how 15 launches could possibly be required, and such a plan been approved to spend billions of dollars on, I just don't know.

So as much as I like the idea of NASA, something needs to be done there.

Arubis• 1 year ago

Senate Launch System sounds more appealing every day. All aboard!

giingyui• 1 year ago

If there is something Congress will always be functional for is increasing spending.

IAmBroom6• 1 year ago

Except this Congress is massively cutting spending on things like the Department of Education. This story is about a notable exception.

crooked-v• 1 year ago

So what are the odds that Trump just takes away the money anyway, and the Supreme Court lets him?

trostaft• 1 year ago

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

autobodie• 1 year ago

That would be a great way to spend the money saved by taking away millions of peoples' healthcare.

musicale4• 1 year ago

NSF funds tons of underpaid grad students who are the source of US research productivity per dollar.

sandworm1014• 1 year ago

And they are the underpaid workforce that keeps the undergrad industrial complex so profitable.

javiramos2• 1 year ago

Different perspective... As an NSF grad student I didn't feel underpaid -- I felt extremely lucky that I got to do cutting-edge research while being paid a low but decent, livable salary. Of course, I could have made more money going into industry -- but at least we have a choice with institutions like the NSF willing to support risky projects that move humanity forward.

daveguy• 1 year ago

Not everything is about productivity per dollar. It's also the source of a pipeline of well trained research scientists who go into cutting edge fields with good pay.

supertrope4• 1 year ago

Maybe the NSF needs to geographically disperse grants to maximize Congressional Districts that benefit. Kind of like how military spending is spread around states.

ceejayoz9• 1 year ago

They do. Any district with a college or university is likely getting some.

coldpie• 1 year ago

Universities do a ton of research supporting rural areas, especially farming. It's about half of the country's population, not to mention the country's food source, so it makes sense that they would spend a lot of research in those areas. Check out your local university's agricultural extension department some time, lots of cool stuff happening there.

drweevil• 1 year ago

Word. The NSF provides great value from a relatively small budget. Because of the small sums involved I take these cuts as evidence of a fundamental hostility to scientific research.

Animats• 1 year ago

"The full text of the Senate bill hasn't been released, but the budget blueprint would postpone the Trump administration's plan to cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.'

The Senate Launch System strikes again.

ACCount364• 1 year ago

If there was one good thing to come out of this administration, it was Jared Isaacman who would just axe Gateway, SLS and Orion.

Now, it seems like even that might end up not happening. What a shitshow.

windows2020• 1 year ago

Wait, so are humans actually going to the moon for the first time in my lifetime in 2027?

protocolture• 1 year ago

I wouldnt hold your breath. There was a great writeup here only a few months ago about why 2027 was already an overly ambitious target.

naysunjr4• 1 year ago

NASA going back to the moon and Musk to Mars is nothing but pipe dreams to sell the story mode types.

The US government has pivoted to animal husbandry of the populace through techno police state, and handing sycophants to power their own title, land and serfs

notfish• 1 year ago

My ex coworkers at spacex are pretty damn motivated to get to mars, many of them despite all the Musking happening. I wouldn’t bet against them.

ACCount364• 1 year ago

In your lifetime? Probably. In 2027? Fat fucking chance.

That deadline is never going to hold - too many things are just nowhere near ready. By now, I expect NET 2030.

venusenvy47• 1 year ago

China has these upcoming plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...

propter_hoc• 1 year ago

Fewer robots, more humans

Exactly the opposite of what they should be funding..

blitzar3• 1 year ago

I too welcome the rise of the terminator and its fellow machine overlords

adastra226• 1 year ago

Why?

IAmBroom6• 1 year ago

IMO, because robots can replace humans in dangerous and highly undesirable jobs, while increasing overall productivity.

spauldo5• 1 year ago

Personally, I prefer more of both. You have to actually do things - as in, develop the engineering, test things, see what works and what doesn't - to advance the state of the art. We need robots for science, humans for engineering.

graycat3• 1 year ago

Budget cuts?

Want to get paid, by the US Federal Government, for pursuing science or technology?

From experience, in simple terms, a word: Have the work for and the funding from the US DOD, department of defense, military, for some work they really care about.

This sounds like a joke, but it's 90+% real.

For years early in my career in applied math and computing, far and away the best parts, funding, technically advanced work, growth in expertise, and working conditions were on US military work, e.g.:

(1) The FFT (fast Fourier transform) and power spectral estimation (as in the book by Blackman and Tukey) for analyzing ocean audio, close to parts of the movie The Hunt for Red October. Also, the movie uses magneto hydrodynamics (MHD), and the specialty of the guy I was working for was MHD.

(2) Some optimization using Lagrangian relaxation for nuclear war.

(3) Given many ships at sea, some Red, some Blue, and some Blue submarines, war breaks out, and how long will the ships last, in particular, the Blue submarines? Sounds impossible or nearly so, but in WWII there were some cute derivations on search at sea and some Poisson process math by a guy Koopmans, and I did a little more on the math, in assembler wrote a random number generator starting with an Oak Ridge formula, and wrote some Monte Carlo code for the whole thing -- yes, used the speeds of the ships, their detection radii, and for each Red-Blue pair the probabilities of none die, one dies, the other dies, both die.

Surprisingly, a famous probability prof was flown in for a fast review. His remark was: "No way can your Monte Carlo fathom the huge sample space tree." Well, maybe, but so what?

"After some days, say 5, let X be the number of Blue submarines still alive. Then X is a random variable and is bounded, that is, is >= 0 and <= the finite number at the start. Then the law of large numbers applies, and can do 500 independent and identically distributed sample paths, add, divide by 500, and get the expected value for the 5 days, and each of the (times) days, within a gnats ass nearly all the time." The prof agreed but was offended by the gnats remark!

Sure, it was simple, but maybe not fully too simple -- was liked, passed the review, and helped my wife and I get our Ph.D degrees.

Also the military funding let me sit alone for some days learning PL/I that later, with a tricky feature of PL/I calling back into the stack of routines called but not yet returned, used to save IBM's AI product YES/L1! Ah, military worked again!

Ah, the military may (still) be interested in computer and communications security and reliability, system design and development methodology, system monitoring, and management, and now in AI, drones, etc. A commercial server farm or network doesn't expect to be attacked by long range missiles, but DOD systems have to be robust in a war!

Once I was at the David Taylor Model Basin (big tank of water to tow candidate ship hull designs), and they were seriously interested in the Navier-Stokes equations -- maybe they still are! Uh, do they have good solutions yet?

naasking2• 1 year ago

From experience, in simple terms, a word: Have the work for and the funding from the US DOD, department of defense, military, for some work they really care about.

Arguably, national defense research is and should be a core funding target of a federal government. This will never go away, as national defense is one of the core purposes of a government.

graycat3• 1 year ago

Moreover, in WWII we had Turing's code breaking, England's radar, the US proximity fuse, and "the bomb, the ATOMIC bomb".

Then Garwin and Tukey talked, and we got the FFT (fast Fourier transform), talked about the test ban treaty and detecting underground tests.

GPS is nice, but the first version, with the relativity considerations, was done at the JHUAPL for the US Navy missile firing submarines.

Then, as I recall, some people in the US concluded

"Never again will US science operate independently of the US military"

or that since WWII nearly all the reason for all the science funding -- Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Lawrence-Berkeley, Stanford Linear Accelerator, Fermi, Brookhaven, Hanford, JHUAPL, NASA, along with DOE and NSF funding of academic research in the STEM fields at Berkeley, U. Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon, Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, etc. -- was intended for US leadership in the STEM fields and, thus, US national security.

Bluntly put.

Right, Simons funds a lot. And Hopkins has the Whiting School of Engineering from the widow of Whiting of Whiting-Turner Construction, etc.

Sorry about war, but I do like the science.

IAmBroom6• 1 year ago

That is a nice autobiographical summary, but it has almost nothing to do with the current topic.

graycat3• 1 year ago

The topic was about Federal budget cuts for the STEM fields. My point was, budget cuts or not, if want to work in the STEM fields, 'bout have to pursue work and funding for national security. I gave some "autobiographical" examples.

throwaway_woxx7• 1 year ago

A counterpoint: The DoD government positions have slowly been converted into contract positions with okay pay (not great), bad benefits, and bad job security. As a contractor at a DoD facility, you're also likely to be treated like a second class citizen in many ways (sorry, you can't attend this meeting/can't use this resource/need to fill out extra paperwork to do something/etc.). The government positions are fine, if you can get one, but most people probably couldn't even before the current administration. I don't think this is the best path for people interested in science and technology.

northlondoner• 1 year ago

Happy to hear about this. Actually, budget should be increased not reduced. From purely ROI terms, NASA has a stellar return on investment. Immense contribution to human civilisation beyond US.

Just a reminder from 2012: [Neil deGrasse Tyson: Invest In NASA, Invest In U.S. Economy](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2012/03/13/neil-degr...)

adastra226• 1 year ago

As someone who worked for NASA, I can tell you all those spin out numbers are bunk. NASA is indeed a good investment, but not for the reasons given. NASA public relations has cooked the books.

naasking2• 1 year ago

These analyses are highly questionable. NASA has a long reputation of being highly inefficient for good reasons. SpaceX did a much better job at optimizing cost in a way that NASA never could have, so it raises the obvious point: how much better would ROI have been in a world where private spaceflight was incentivized earlier? The answer isn't obviously in NASA's favour.

SlightlyLeftPad2• 1 year ago

It’s hard to say privatization earlier would have lead to better outcomes. The drawback of privatization is the constant search for profitability which puts undue pressure against safety (Boeing?). Historically, only nation states had the organizational structure and long-term thinking to fund the massive investment required to research space flight in the first place, often motivated by weapons development.

Obviously, this is no longer the case. However, It’s arguably because of these nation-sponsored programs that made companies like SpaceX commercializable in the first place since they’re piggybacking on a lot of the science done by the governments.

aqme28• 1 year ago

How does this square with the recent SCOTUS case that says, basically, that the executive can dismantle the DOE with mass dismissals, regardless of Congress? Couldn’t Trump do the same here?

cvoss• 1 year ago

SCOTUS has not issued a judgment in that case (McMahon v. New York). They merely granted the case and will hear it next term. The headlines you likely saw were commenting on how the court chose to deal with the preliminary injunction that was in place in the meantime. It's a major peeve of mine when those headlines make it sound like such an order is actually disposing of the case. In reality, the case is just starting.

Anyway, on the question of whether the chief of an organization can fire his or her own employees, the answer is usually "yes, of course, how could it be otherwise?" That's why it matters who the chief is.

ceejayoz9• 1 year ago

Allowing it to go through until next term is fundamentally permitting it. (This is the entire point of injunctions; to prevent irreparable harm while the case is argued.) Many of these folks, once fired, are never coming back. Mission accomplished, even if SCOTUS says "ok we've finally decided that'd be wrong" sometime next year.

Anyway, on the question of whether the chief of an organization can fire his or her own employees, the answer is usually "yes, of course, how could it be otherwise?" That's why it matters who the chief is.

The government is not a company. It has three coequal branches. The President is often not legally entitled to fire employees, let alone shutter entire agencies whose existence and function is mandated by law.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48432

"In the 1970s, however, President Richard Nixon asserted the authority to act on his own to withhold funds or curtail programs he opposed. This assertion was challenged in the courts in a number of suits to compel the release of impounded funds or require the Administration to carry out statutory duties that would result in the expenditure of funds. Congress ultimately responded by enacting impoundment control legislation as Title X of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974."

erghjunk2• 1 year ago

We're counting down the days to August 30 in our house as my spouse is a NASA contractor who works at a program with a current expected budget cut of 40%, IIRC. I sure hope these bills pass and the cuts don't happen, but it's abundantly clear at this point that optimism is pretty foolish.

Gud• 1 year ago

Good luck to your spouse and to NASA.

If the American congress is blocking this, it’s a glimmer of hope for the US and the rest of the planet.

erghjunk2• 1 year ago

thank you.

themgt• 1 year ago

Just do a quick skim of China's reusable rocket projects: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1lncgi8/status_of_ch...

There's over a dozen! They're blatantly ripping off SpaceX, which is very smart and what everyone else should have been doing. It's absolutely insane that the US is going to throw another $10 or $30 billion at SLS. Our leaders will go on TV with a straight face and say "China competes unfairly, everything is state run!" but China is probably doing FIFTEEN reusable rocket projects for less than the amount of gov't money we're lighting on fire with SLS rocket to nowhere.

FrustratedMonky2• 1 year ago

If they are going to try and backtrack, why pass it in first place?

IAmBroom6• 1 year ago

Because: Congress has turnover; the POTUS has turnover; things change; Trump is a mercurial idiotic dictator-wannabe.

FrustratedMonky2• 1 year ago

But they passed the big bill like a couple weeks ago, and now changing already. There hasn't been any turnover.

ceejayoz9• 1 year ago

The bill was signed twelve days ago. What turnover?

msgodel3• 1 year ago

The aggressive cutting meant we ran a budget surplus for June. This has to happen or everything gets cut. We're pretty much at the end of the road.

The Democrats had control of the white house and legislature at the beginning of Biden's presidency and could have chosen alternatives to cut but did not.

As I've said so often: if you don't like what Trump is doing you need to campaign for viable alternatives.

softwaredoug• 1 year ago

The viable alternative is pretty obvious. Don’t renew the tax cuts and cut entitlements and defense. That’s what you have to do to get a balanced budget. You don’t get a balanced budget trimming random measly costs that might look nice but are infinitesimal parts of the budget.

But we tend to cut taxes, not substantive spending. Which is going to saddle my kids with a mess.

msgodel3• 1 year ago

What do you think the tariffs are? We've just about maxed out domestic tax. Already we're probably past the peak of the laffer curve.

ceejayoz9• 1 year ago

The aggressive cutting meant we ran a budget surplus for June.

My household runs a very nice budget surplus if I don't pay the mortgage, student loans, credit card bills, electricity, gas, insurance, etc. too. Huge balance in the account!

It's a few months later that the chickens come home to roost.

ImJamal• 1 year ago

The government, as far as I can tell, is paying interest on the debt and as such your example seems flawed. It would be like you decide to stop going to restaurants and now you aren't going into debt.

AnimalMuppet2• 1 year ago

Can someone with better search-foo than I tell me when the last time was that the US passed an actual budget? Not a continuing resolution, an actual budget. And maybe what the time before that was?

My impression is that it's happened maybe twice in the last 15 years, but I am open to correction.

This is the most basic duty of Congress, and they've been incapable of fulfilling it lately. (If you wonder why the president rules so much by executive order, it's because Congress can't or won't do its job.) So it will be interesting to see if the current Congress is more functional than recent ones.

j7ake• 1 year ago

Funding training programs and basic is extremely effective per dollar spent.

Where else can you pay someone 50k a year and get PhD-level productivity?

Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

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