White House may seek to slash NASA’s science budget by 50 percent

If we're only interested in telecommunications satellites and ballistic missiles than the cheapest way to deliver a payload is central. But if the mission is supposed to be collecting data, it is obviously more complicated.

A lot of NASA's science (and science supporting) budget has to go into R&D and operations (i.e. actually running the missions so the scientists can do their thing).
tCheapest way to deliver a payload is also central for science missions. More money is then available for the payload. Transportation costs are part of the mission budget. Also, with cheaper transportation, more mass can be carried as more science payload or cheaper spacecraft construction.

Running missions is not that expensive compared to cost of spacecraft, instruments/experiments or launch vehicle.
 
NASA is closing three offices and laying off their staff as a first step in broader workforce reductions at the agency ordered by the Trump administration.

NASA announced March 10 that it was closing the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The employees of those offices, 23 in total, will be laid off.

“To optimize our workforce, and in compliance with an Executive Order, NASA is beginning its phased approach to a reduction in force, known as a RIF,” NASA spokesperson Cheryl Warner said in a statement. “A small number of individuals received notification Monday they are a part of NASA’s RIF.”

 
4,600 years ago, there were already slave-propelled rowing ships and galleys were used in the Mediterranean until 1748.

The steam turbine was invented in the first century AD.

The propeller was invented in 950 B.C.

I wonder how many good ideas are being exterminated now in universities and in the editorial offices of scientific publications.

The wise can change his mind, the fool never. Kant
Then you should have a problem with the current administration which is cutting a lot of funding to University level research.
 
The current administration has found fraud and waste at University research centers.
 
In my opinion, it is a mistake to interpret the behavior of the new U.S. administration in a political key. They are simply desperate to prevent the interest in the debt from destroying their country. They will do whatever it takes to cut costs by ending waste, reasoning, negotiating, or acting energetically, but they will do it anyway. They will not respect their allies or established geographical, cultural, diplomatic or economic conventions, because they are convinced that these are the cause of their current decline and act in terms of survival.
 
The current administration has found fraud and waste at University research centers.
Remember, the current administration considers (or claims to consider*) the entire topic of climate change** to be fraud and waste. And DOGE's accuracy on claimed discovery of fraud and waste has been shown to be out by up to 1,000 times the actual value involved.

* Elon's not stupid

** If not meteorology as a whole
 
4,600 years ago, there were already slave-propelled rowing ships and galleys were used in the Mediterranean until 1748.

The steam turbine was invented in the first century AD.

The propeller was invented in 950 B.C.

I wonder how many good ideas are being exterminated now in universities and in the editorial offices of scientific publications.

The wise can change his mind, the fool never. Kant

Actually, you didn't have slaves or prisoners rowing galleys until Renaissance era France. In ancient Athens, the citizens were the rowers. Similarly, when the Venetians transitioned from privately owned ships to state owned merchant galleys, you had free citizens as rowers.
 
Remember, the current administration considers (or claims to consider*) the entire topic of climate change** to be fraud and waste. And DOGE's accuracy on claimed discovery of fraud and waste has been shown to be out by up to 1,000 times the actual value involved.

* Elon's not stupid

** If not meteorology as a whole
It will be difficult to prevent DOGE from becoming some kind of inquisition, it is the law of the pendulum. I hope, for the sake of freedom, that the constitutional mechanisms established in the US will act as a buffer against any excesses, although they have not proven capable of doing so during the previous administration.
 
It seems common sense that it will always be cheaper to use a more powerful rocket than several extra years of mission, salaries and vacations of the controllers, maintenance of the control equipment, electric bill...
A friend of mine is involved in one of the deep space missions, I think you'd be surprised at how few people can be involved, and that part time.
 
Actually, you didn't have slaves or prisoners rowing galleys until Renaissance era France. In ancient Athens, the citizens were the rowers. Similarly, when the Venetians transitioned from privately owned ships to state owned merchant galleys, you had free citizens as rowers.
Once again, the myth of the free Athenian citizens and the wooden wall of the sibyl. The rowers were Athenian "patriots" who were paid for their work with the money embezzled from the Delian League, until it ran out... that was a world of slaves.

The only rowers in history who were paid anything were the Ben Hur extras.
 
A friend of mine is involved in one of the deep space missions, I think you'd be surprised at how few people can be involved, and that part time.
You're right, I've been informing myself that they use a system with minimal personnel, such as astronomical observatories.
 
Our spacecraft use a propulsion system developed by the Nazis and no one has been able to create anything different in eighty-six years.

Flown non-chemical rocket propulsion or attitude control systems:
Ion drives:
Hall Effect Thrusters
Field-Emission Electric Propulsion
Gridded Ion Thruster
Colloid Thruster
Electrodeless Plasma Thruster

Pulsed Plasma Thruster
Resistojet
Arcjet
Solar Sail
Reaction Wheel
Lightcraft (for very small values of 'flown')

Developmental Systems*:
Nano-Particle Field Extraction Thruster
VASIMR
Helicon Double Layer Thruster
Microwave Electrothermal Thruster
Magnetoplasma Dynamic Thruster/Lorentz Force Accelerator
Pulsed Inductive Thruster/FARAD
Radio-Isotope Thruster
Vacuum Arc Thruster
MagBeam
Nuclear Pulse (Orion/Daedalus/Longshot/Medusa)
Antimatter Catalyzed Nuclear Pulse
Magneto-Inertial Fusion Rocket
Pulsed Fission Fusion Propulsion
Mass-Driver
Fission-Fragment Rocket
Diffractive Solar Sail
Fission Sail
Fusion Rocket
Nuclear Thermal Rocket
Electric Sail
Magnetic Sail
MagSail
Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2)
Magnetoplasma Sail
Plasma Magnet
Plasma Magnetoshell
Beam Powered Magsail
Electrodynamic Tether
Momentum Exchange Tether
Universal Orbital Support System
Alcubierre Drive
Casimir Effect
Differential Sail
Laser Augmented Sail
Laser Electric Propulsion
Laser Thermal Rocket
Mass Beam
Microwave Sail
Microwave Thermal Propulsion

(Yes, I got carried away down a wiki wormhole)

* Ranging from mission ready to doable with current technology, to doable with massive infrastructure, to the physics says this should work but we don't have a clue how to implement it (the Alcubierre Drive).

 
We are not able to abandon oar-powered ships, slave business is very lucrative, and galleys are also a good means of getting rid of political enemies. Ocean sailing is too dangerous for insurance companies, we don't know what's on the other side, there are no maps of winds or currents, and we lack effective methods of navigating away from shores. Our clocks are not accurate enough, our compasses mark badly when we travel west, the Church of Rome has forbidden the use of the Sunstone of the Vikings and the Al-Kemal of the Saracens.

It will be better to continue paddling.
 
On the other hand, they have recently found Lesotho. To much surprise.
 
It had been all the rage to attack not just SLS, but NASA in general…NASAWATCH one of the greatest offenders.

But that kind of talk paves the way for those who run with scissors. Cowing is the opposite of Musk—but I think he made Elon inevitable.

I like a site called AMERICASPACE, home to Jim Hillhouse.

He said the Old Space and New Space should be “praising the hell out of each other.”

Had that been the case—and NASA better funded so as to quieten rivalries between Centers—we might not be seeing these cuts.

 
Sadly--we have folks that think no tax dollars should go to science:

This worthy who calls himself Nate at Space News uttered the sunburst:

"Science will never justify the enormous outlays you desire. Ever. Want to see more science? It has to come second to commerce."

That mindset is pure cancer.
You can't eat soil but you need to have soil to grow crops that you can eat.
 
Anything a government decides is politics?
War is the failure of politicians and when they insist on manipulating wars, they become endless. The classic solution to the excesses and ineptitudes of politicians is usually a military coup, but that is not the only solution. When a democratic system is corrupt, the solution can only come from outside it, through merchants, technicians and engineers tired of paying taxes for non-productive purposes for the very society that pays them with effort. Those guys who come from outside the system have a knife between their teeth, they don't come to negotiate or share the business with those who are already inside.
 
It had been all the rage to attack not just SLS, but NASA in general…NASAWATCH one of the greatest offenders.

But that kind of talk paves the way for those who run with scissors. Cowing is the opposite of Musk—but I think he made Elon inevitable.

I like a site called AMERICASPACE, home to Jim Hillhouse.
He is clueless
 
Sadly--we have folks that think no tax dollars should go to science:

This worthy who calls himself Nate at Space News uttered the sunburst:

That mindset is pure cancer.
There is a guy on there that is worse.
He posts lies like Europa Clipper is more expensive because it has to do an extended mission with flybys instead of using SLS.
He thinks ULA is scorned by most in the industry.
He doesn't understand that MSFC was no longer the center of excellence for launch vehicles. The experts are now in industry. Also, MSFC is no longer NASA's expert for launching hardware into space. That would be NASA's Launch Services Program. They with the former Lewis and Goddard LV projects have flown more missions than the rest for NASA.
 
Maybe this could be an argument for more money seeing the current US administration...
(It is a joke )

There have been no improvements in liquid propulsion. However, what could be done in 1969, obviously cannot be done in 2025. We have computers. So what? By themselves, computers make no one smarter. The proliferation of "some guy" online with no real name and actual credentials means an overflowing of the stupid. Stupid remarks by stupid people that are not supported by the people who matter - smart people with real names and actual credentials.

Elon Musk builds a rocket larger than the Saturn V. So what? He cannot get it to fly reliably. After all of those detonations, I'd quit astronaut training for something safer like military front-line pilot training.
 
However, what could be done in 1969, obviously cannot be done in 2025.
That is so wrong. We are doing more. Booster/First stages are being recovered and reused.
Elon Musk builds a rocket larger than the Saturn V. So what? He cannot get it to fly reliably. After all of those detonations, I'd quit astronaut training for something safer like military front-line pilot training.
So what? Building, flying and throwing away a rocket larger than Saturn V is easy. Trying to make it reusable from the beginning is harder. The booster is already recoverable. It would be easy to put a Starship in orbit vs trying to have it reenter and brake onto the ocean surface. They are already trying to make it larger than earlier versions and maybe some structural/fluid resonance have arisen. Easy fixes if configurations don't change between launches. SpaceX maybe have to step back from "improvements", first get a configuration to complete a whole mission cleanly and then move onto bigger and better.
 
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Our spacecraft use a propulsion system developed by the Nazis and no one has been able to create anything different in eighty-six years.
Nazis did no such thing.
a. Nazis never developed a spacecraft
b. Spacecraft don't use propulsion systems like the Nazis
c. Robert Goddard developed the first liquid propulsion system.
 
Nazis did no such thing.
a. Nazis never developed a spacecraft
b. Spacecraft don't use propulsion systems like the Nazis
c. Robert Goddard developed the first liquid propulsion system.

Robert Goddard? Pfffft! He never built something like the V-2.
 
He is clueless
And you know that how exactly?

Also, the recent Starship failure would likely have happened even if it were just an expendable upper stage.

Payload processing atop Deltas makes no one infallible.
 
And you know that how exactly?
History has shown it and the fact you like him
Also, the recent Starship failure would likely have happened even if it were just an expendable upper stage.
wrong. they wouldn't have had to lengthen Starship from the flight 6 configuration, which was successful.
Payload processing atop Deltas makes no one infallible.
And what is that suppose to mean? I worked more than 2x more Atlas V launches than Delta II.
 
Article speaks for itself as regards the size of the cuts NASA is expected to make in staffing and how these cuts have so far been made.

With the recent layoffs, Isaacman is set to lead a workforce that includes individuals who appear increasingly alarmed about the direction the space agency is headed.

“There’s a massive concern across the agency that, among other issues, we’re going to have significant brain drain that will affect not only current missions but engineering and science for generations to come,” one NASA employee told CNN.

 
NASA Statement on Nomination of Greg Autry for Agency CFO:

Momentum seems to be building for Jared Isaacman to become NASA administrator:

Therefore, although there may be some grumbling about Isaacman's conflicts, they are unlikely to be a killer. Cruz, too, has signaled privately that he is willing to move forward with the nomination. But it likely won't be soon. Due to recesses in April for Easter and Passover, there are limited opportunities for a confirmation hearing. Therefore, it seems most probable that Isaacman will not appear before Cruz's committee until May.
 

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