Comment by Jun8
2 days ago
You can find NASA's 2025 Budget Request Summary here (PDF link: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/fy-2025-budg...). It's a visually great deck that provides a lot info.
From Slide 26: "$317M supports the operation of Great Observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble, and Chandra".
Can't some of the money that's been saved from other cutting channeled to NASA?
Stop trying to use logic to make sense of these budget cuts. The budget cuts aren't about saving money. They're about destroying whole parts of the Government.
Not just the government. Destroying whole parts of the future and the potential of humanity, just to stoke the egos of two men.
You packed quite a punch in that short comment! Those fed employees who voted for this govt. and got laid off must be feeling a voters remorse.
Facebook is packed with posts of people saying they support this administration but could they please make an exception for their own role or for their loved one whose nursing care got cut (at the VA) etc.
They still don't understand that they voted for this specific thing, nobody was shy during the campaign about what was to come.
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They don't want to destroy it, just make it so useless they have pretext to privatize it.
I don’t think anyone wants to privatize any of the space telescopes or NASA as a whole. Do you have any evidence that there is someone who does?
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Nah, a lot of this is about removing regulation to let private businesses do whatever they want. It isn't about privatizing the government, it's about removing regulations and "woke" policies
You see, those are necessary steps since billionaires are tired of rules and regulations that don't let them grow and thus hold America back, so it can't be great again.
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Once the money is approved it is then the receiving agency/orgs money. Not the Executive branch’s money to redistribute. There is no money being “saved” or “cut”, there are only corrupt people halting payments of the budgeted money and illegally laying off workers.
This only matters if the judicial branch does their job, which so far they haven't been.
The congressional branch could sue too.
Many of the announced savings are fake. The actual savings are a paltry number that will be dwarfed by the 100s of billions that will be spent on border security theater, not to mention the trillions in upcoming tax cuts for the wealthy.
I'd say at least the SLS program is in jeopardy. NASA has notably had some real scares recently about massive job cuts that have thus far not panned out. Since the administration revels in chaos this probably won't be resolved neatly or soon.
IMHO if someone wanted to cut the James Webb the time to do it was 15 years ago. Now that it is actually flying and producing the best images of the cosmos to date it is too late. Those costs are fully sunk. The ongoing running costs are downright modest by government standards. Plus the project is visible enough that cuts are likely to result in public outcry.
They could stop with the Mars nonsense and cancel SLS.
The SLS being a government funded competitor to SpaceX has little hope...
That said I am unsure if that is that much of a blow. The government is very good at some things, it looks to me (I am a casual observer) that SpaceX has eaten their lunch in terms of a space programme.
But the James Webb was exactly the sort of incredibly difficult, high risk project that NASA (and Government labs generally) excel at. No private company would ever do something like that. It is a huge achievement and is changing our view, again, of the Universe.
So I guess it will be doomed now too. Noting so dangerous as a good example.
The SLS being a government funded competitor to SpaceX has little hope
SLS was never about being the most practical and/or efficient launcher. It is a pork barrel project, but one with an important role. In particular, it is maintaining vital aerospace industrial capacity. If the US wants things like ICBMs then programs like SLS are a necessary evil.
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lol the Mars project is a prestige project for Musk now, no way that gets defunded.
It's a distraction and likely a way to fund money to his companies.
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SLS has been to the moon and back. Starship hasn't yet made it to orbit.
SLS has been around the moon and back; that mission was equivalent to an unmanned Apollo VIII. Going around the moon is much easier than landing on it and coming back.
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Starship has made orbit several times.
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> Can't some of the money that's been saved from other cutting channeled to NASA?
Why would they want to do that? This administration is hell-bent on reducing spending, period, not moving it around, as well as crippling the executive branch's ability to govern. And they don't care what useful initiatives die due to their actions.
And I can't see Trump's supporters caring about this at all. He won the presidency in no small part because he acknowledged that people were facing financial strife, while Harris just kept repeating that the economy was great (implying that anyone with financial issues was either imagining it, or themselves at fault). Why would a Trump supporter care about some "elitist" scientist being able to look at celestial phenomena? They don't care about this stuff, sadly.
No. Because the people in charge of NASA will make sure to make sure that every dollar cut will go to the most loved programs to keep awareness high.
More likely to end up at Space X
> Can't some of the money that's been saved from other cutting channeled to NASA?
What are you a socialist? /s