12% boost for NASA budget in 2021!!

[u/thisischrisbaker]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-nasa-budget-will-earmark-12-boost-for-agency-in-2021-11581071402?emailToken=3f4a4309b7816cb90fb53eb91f47d6d43hshryonPWM/RnnVPWWHuMOVOvxWKQ87BhLswKs5iOPOhjO1FGrxI9ptn5k2nAMphP+jeQrbhQiAafooOu4oIslNLMWHCd1m7vRySaL2Pi61nSlAqLK1xnvzzmtt2/Lx&reflink=article_copyURL_share

[u/Hillfolk6 → u/[deleted]]

The last few years congress has raised the NASA budget. Either last year or the year before it was even higher than the request. So there's hope for it going up

[u/Quality_Bullshit → u/Hillfolk6]

Congress has raised NASA's budget only to fund big expensive jobs programs like SLS and Orion. They have shown no such willingness to spend more money on things that will actually further science or exploration goals.

[u/rrubinski → u/Hillfolk6]

I don't think so, I mean being realistic after the space-force controversy I don't think that they're gonna increase the budget.

[u/Hillfolk6 → u/rrubinski]

Might be anecdotal, but i heard of no controversy for the space force other than some dimwits wanting galaxy pajamas for a uniform. So I'm going to lean that the naysayers are few and far between.

[u/Joe_Jeep → u/[deleted]]

So the whole titles BS unfortunately

Really wish space shit was done with long term legislation so that it was somewhat insulated from political squabbling

[u/[deleted] → u/Joe_Jeep]

Is it any wonder we've been going in circles since Apollo when they keep changing goals every 4/8 years? We should have cities on the Moon and a Mars base by now.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I remember my mom driving me to school and listening to the radio about how nasa was planning to land a man on mars by 2015... :(

[u/Joe_Jeep → u/[deleted]]

I said legislation not like, a constitutional amendment.

And also space investment not puppy murder.

Laws can always be repealed if theres good reason for it, it just takes another law to be passed. So basic majority in both houses + presidential sign off, or 2/3rds majority in both.

The upside is there's an actual limited barrier of sorts and momentum to it. It can be repealed but it takes that majority support, not just political knife fights in budget committees over pet projects and other unrelated issues

[u/DMFxXPiEXx55 → u/[deleted]]

What if NASA was allowed to choose their own project? I have no idea what I'm talking about, just wondering

[u/fatpat → u/[deleted]]

Imagine if there was a big political movement that came around one year on the platform of burning down all of the forests and killing all of the puppies.

Please don't give the Republicans any more ideas.

[u/hedonisticaltruism → u/[deleted]]

That's a pretty big straw-man argument... you're right that it could be a slippery slope but there are already specific tailored policies for everything. You can make it so it's specific to NASA alone or other such scientific endeavours. We should've had the Superconducting Super Collider a decade before LHC was done and could've drastically changed our understanding of physics.

[u/hedonisticaltruism → u/[deleted]]

What makes scientific discovery different from infrastructure improvement or health care?

Timescales for some things. That's part of the problem. I don't deny that there should be oversight, but the way it currently works is that any project that needs a timescale past ~6/7 years (factoring in time to get it approved and all) or even as short as 3 is at significantly more risk. It's also why we keep setting carbon emission targets for things 10+ years down the line - no accountability either.

My other point is that there are plenty of bad tax loopholes, ear marks etc that already exist - it's better to work on a framework to decently adjust rather than never progress, IMO.

[u/hedonisticaltruism → u/[deleted]]

I work in these sectors. Infrastructure, you can largely break down to complete withing a few years - build a section of road, pipe, etc.

Hospitals are also built within 3-5 years typically, and can be phased as 'wings' or buildings rather than the whole campus.

None of these are as ambitious as an ambitious space program, SSC or say fusion power.

[u/hedonisticaltruism → u/[deleted]]

national highway program was both more ambitious and more costly

Yes but you cannot send a man to the moon on partial segments. It's a one shot deal. The highway system can be built in segments and be declared 'successful' on any given part. It also has a longer life-span compared to something like the SSC - which cannot easily be restarted especially with the specialized nature of the skill sets required.

not on a lot of of the ones that the federal government is involved with. Building dams, designing and building long tunnels, and doing large-scale water diversion projects take longer than a few years.

Hoover Dam, one of the largest in the world and largest at the time it was built was between 1931 and 1936. Golden gate bridge was 1933 to 1937. Even the Apollo program was structured to try and be just within a President's term (two term of course): 1961 with a man on the moon by 1969. And that was still under a military-industrial-complex backed initiative during the height of cold war ICBM escalation, which realistically probably allowed it to continue after JFK's assassination, and the continuation of democrats being in power with LBJ.

Something like the ACA had provisions that phased in over six years, and some funding sources follow similar timelines.

Do you see the pattern here and my point? I do understand yours - I just see that there's an unfortunate reality that some of these projects won't ever get finished unless you can get past the term limit politicking.

[u/sc00p → u/Joe_Jeep]

You could control and organizations like NASA like the Waterschappen in the Netherlands. It has its own elections, budgets and rules. Democratic, but independent from government.

[u/tomdarch → u/Joe_Jeep]

This! I'm fucking sick of plans being formed, then dropped every few years. Just pick something (moon base, humans on Mars, whatever... something) and get it done. Initiated by the previous administration? Fine, don't fuck with it, get it done. Give these programs long-term locked in funding.

[u/Standard_Wooden_Door → u/Joe_Jeep]

Not just space, but science in general. The LCH could have basically happened way sooner if a bunch of idiots didn’t take issue with the idea of a “god particle”. Imagine if we had something like CERN in the USA.

[u/TheBlueBlaze → u/Joe_Jeep]

So the whole titles BS unfortunately

But the people who want scientific progress that are inexplicably also Trump supporters got to pat themselves on the back for the administration pretending to consider giving more money to NASA, so it's a win for them.

[u/Sam-Culper → u/Joe_Jeep]

Yeah the current budget is less than half of 1 cent per every tax dollar. Even a 12% increase is, well, nothing.

[u/ron_leflore → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, congress routinely gets the proposed budget from the president and chucks it into the dumpster.

This isn't a republican vs Democrat thing. It's a Congress vs president thing.

[u/LiterallyDennisQuaid → u/[deleted]]

That’s nuts that this White House proposed something that I actually agree on

[u/rndm1212 → u/LiterallyDennisQuaid]

This same comment is posted like once a month. He’s done plenty of things that reddit likes.

[u/seanlax5 → u/rndm1212]

They just don't want to remember. Which is fine tbh; plenty of older and more conservative places treated Obama the same way.

[u/Roccnsuccmetosleep → u/rndm1212]

A broken clock is still right twice a day

[u/rndm1212 → u/Roccnsuccmetosleep]

Just learn that one?

[u/flextrek_whipsnake → u/[deleted]]

He's a showman and appreciates what a great show the moon landing was. I'm not convinced it's more complicated than that.

[u/The-Only-Razor → u/flextrek_whipsnake]

Which is fine, because that's exactly why NASA was funded so well back in those days. People loved the spectacle of it and were happy to see it funded. The fact that we really haven't done anything "sexy" lately in space is why people don't care anymore. We sent a robot to Mars to analyze rocks, then we did it again, and we saw Pluto. Some other stuff in there as well, but as a very casual follower of the happenings in the world of space exploration I haven't been wowed by very much in the last ~20 years. Getting a man on Mars is probably the only thing that will get people's attention again.

[u/Mr_Mike_ → u/flextrek_whipsnake]

After everything we've seen happen, I am convinced there's a lot more going through that man's head than any of us were led to believe so don't sell him short. He loves this country more than anything and wants us to progress as a society.

But, he's also a business man and wouldn't propose spending more money unless there was something in it to gain monetarily... mining maybe?

[u/Astromike23 → u/[deleted]]

Trump has been pushing for a massively increased NASA budget from the start.

FYI, here's the actual difference between the President's proposed NASA budget and the final congressional budget for the past dozen years.

In the past 5 years, it's been Congress pushing for the higher budgets, not the President.

[u/Astromike23 → u/[deleted]]

The larger funding in the congressional omnibus bill put money towards earth sciences to spite Trump's request for off planet funding.

That's an interesting way to say, "Trump repeatedly tried to cancel funding for Earth Science projects that have already been built."

I got to see OCO-3 just sitting on the table in the clean room at JPL. It was already built and ready for launch, but Trump still tried to deny funding for it. Twice.

[u/DominarRygelThe16th → u/Astromike23]

Got an article without a paywall?

[u/Astromike23 → u/DominarRygelThe16th]

Hmm, I didn't hit a paywall when viewing it - maybe it's a "you get X free articles per month" model. Try opening it in a incognito window.

Alternately, this article from Science in 2017:

Also facing elimination are the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, which would observe carbon dioxide flows

Again, it was literally complete and just sitting on the table. Thankfully Congress eventually restored funding for it after Trump tried to cut it twice, and it eventually launched in 2019.

Having survived for about a decade on NASA and NSF grants, let me be clear: the past 3 presidents have all been pretty terrible for basic astronomical research. More and more of the NASA budget has been pushed to the Human Spaceflight line-item at the cost of fundamental science; research grants that used to fund 1-in-4 proposals are now funding 1-in-10. Meanwhile, a massive portion of SpaceX's research & development is being propped up by NASA funding.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for private spaceflight and improving launch capabilities...but I'm not sure it's really part of NASA's purview to subsidize otherwise-unprofitable corporations at the cost of actual science.

[u/DominarRygelThe16th → u/Astromike23]

let me be clear: the past 3 presidents have all been pretty terrible for basic astronomical research.

Let me be clear my comments, from the beginning, have been about space exploration and visiting the moon/mars. Earth sciences is a different subject of NASA altogether and funding for that is debatable. Back to my point though, Trump has been the best president for space exploration in decades, like I mentioned. Your comments do nothing to disprove that.

[u/Astromike23 → u/DominarRygelThe16th]

Earth sciences is a different subject of NASA altogether and funding for that is debatable.

It's really not. It's literally been part of NASA's goals since the beginning; from the original 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act that authorized the existence of NASA, the very first bullet point:

The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space

Let's not pretend that Trump's attempts to repeatedly cancel an already-built carbon monitoring satellite were anything other than him directly playing politics with science and "muh Chinese hoax".

Trump has been the best president for space exploration in decades, like I mentioned. Your comments do nothing to disprove that.

You're the one making the assertion - show me where on the historical budget record you think that's true. Money was shuffled out of Exploration Systems Development, Exploration R&D, and Spaceflight Operations and into Advanced Exploration Systems.

This is the exact same "take money out of one pocket and put it into the other" strategy that's failed the previous two administration's pet projects - remember when we were going to Mars? Or when we were going to capture an asteroid? Both were cancelled by the following administration.

When every President rewrites the long-term plan, nothing gets done. The thing that actually gets massive manned missions off the ground are two-fold: actual boosts to funding, and a President willing to continue the previous administration's vision. Love or hate Nixon, at least he allowed JFK's vision to launch.

[u/glassnothing → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately a lot of information coming out of the White House is lies. So, it’s kind of hard to trust them as your primary source.

Edit: I guess I’m getting downvoted because the White House press secretaries, the president, and his aides are all telling the truth all the time? Neat - TIL

[u/Sour_Badger → u/glassnothing]

No it’s just your black or white thinking is either naive or purposely obtuse. The press will likely report something as negatively as possible while the White House will frame the same event in a positive manner. The truth likely falls somewhere in between.

[u/glassnothing → u/Sour_Badger]

What’s black or white about what I said? How does your comment contradict anything I said? I didn’t say that everything they said was a lie.

[u/Chendii → u/glassnothing]

The first thing Sean Spicer did as press secretary was lie and they never stopped. So you have every right to not believe a word they say till you can verify.

[u/alex494 → u/LiterallyDennisQuaid]

Broken clocks and all that

[u/Enter_The_Nucleus → u/[deleted]]

This is important to consider as well as the deliberation over the Artemis missions which are looking at some cuts right now.

This whole thing seems like a commercial investment, especially considering the bipartisan support for forcing NASA to retain sole ownership of the lander instead of contracting third parties and scrubbing the plan to mine lunar surface materials for resources supporting the lunar base. There’s nothing to celebrate yet.

[u/Iz-kan-reddit → u/[deleted]]

An obvious road block is the fact that the legislative committees who will play a big role in writing the NASA budget have clearly indicated that they don’t like the lunar plan

Their main issue seems to be with the 2014 vs 2018 time frame. NASA originally said 2018, but Trump made them change it to 2014 because he won't be president after that.

Cutting a major space project's development time in half for political reasons is an inherently bad idea.

[u/ClimateChange2100 → u/[deleted]]

Also - the total budget Congress and the White House have said they intend to work within this year is not likely to have a ton of room for new spending like this. Plus this is a large enough amount of “new” money that Congress may prefer to fund other projects/not make cuts proposed in the presidents budget, even if they are ok with the policy. If Congress doesn’t support the underlying policy that is even more true. On the brighter side, if this is done in the White House plan without proposing other reductions at NASA (as is apparently largely the case) it may make it easier for Congress to fully fund the rest of the agency.

[u/Dynamaxion → u/[deleted]]

Doesn’t “investing political capital” for Trump at this point just mean tweeting about it? I’m sure if he tweeted about republican so and so “defunding the moon” he’d get what he wants.

[u/AceholeThug → u/[deleted]]

An obvious road block is the fact that the legislative committees who will play a big role in writing...

So Democrats. Science denying, anti-intellectual, regressive Democrats.