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Posted on 05/09/2025 1:18:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Pinching pennies and landing a crew of astronauts on the Moon before a geopolitical rivalry aren't two endeavors that go hand-in-hand. The Trump administration released NASA's proposed 2026 discretionary budget last week. The federal space agency would see a $6 billion cut if implemented as written, roughly a 24% decrease compared to 2025. However, the White House is confusingly still committed to beating China to the lunar surface despite shuttering all the projects working towards that goal.
The proposed 2026 budget has a 10% increase for human space exploration, but the $7 billion allocated won't be used for the significant pieces of technology developed for the Artemis program. The Space Launch System rocket and the accompanying Orion capsule spacecraft have been cancelled. Gateway, the space station slated to be built in lunar orbit, has also been cancelled. Frustratingly, the first Gateway module has already been built in Italy and arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida last month.
Adding to the wasted module, SLS and Orion only flew once for the uncrewed Artemis I mission in November 2022. The Trump administration has effectively flushed $47.5 billion down the toilet, according to Time. The stiffest complaints thrown at Artemis have been the budget overruns and development delays. These cancellations would only worsen the situation as NASA is forced to return to square one.
SpaceX could be contracted to launch Artemis missions
Joe Raedle/Getty Images With the current projects canned and a human spaceflight budget increase, the Trump administration is seemingly setting the stage to award a massive contract to a private space company. The contractor would have to develop a commercial platform to deliver NASA's Artemis astronauts to the Moon. Not to mention, the contractor is expected to beat China. The Chinese program's plans to land two taikonauts on the lunar surface by 2030, three years after the Artemis III landing, seemed conservative. Now, the emerging East Asian space power could pass the United States in this new space race.
It's no secret that Elon Musk's SpaceX would be the favorite to win the contract. It's also no secret that the government-gutting CEO detests the effort to return to the Moon and the Artemis program. As always, Musk claimed he could do it faster and cheaper. Let's ignore that delays with Starship's lunar lander are partly why Artemis has been pushed back before. Any crewed lunar exploration program is a protracted and expensive effort that requires steadfast leadership, the antithesis of the Trump White House. I wish the best to the astronauts who are asked to climb aboard a Moon-bound starship. You're gonna need it.
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I thought we already won “the race to the moon” decades ago?
Is this an admission that we never actually went there?
End sarcasm alert for the low-IQ crowd.
Trump is afraid that a trip to them moon, with modern cameras looking back at Earth, will prove the Earth is flat and we’ve been lied to all our lives. /sarc
Artemis has been pushing deadlines back a year every year for almost a decade.
They are NASA’s version of California’s high speed rail—a useless boondoggle.
Zero out the project and move on....
Civilian contractors can do it at least 50% cheaper.
The compbureaucracylaint is Trump is shifting resources from government bureaucracies to more efficient private organizations that emphasize performance over DEI, etc.
No. According to conspiracy theories it was faked.
Anyone who thinks the Earth is flat is a complete retard.
Every mission imagined is crippled by the "need" for triple redundancy and associated cost.
How come the world has to be flat. Maybe it is conical?
If it was faked, the USSR would have humiliated the U.S. They may not have been able to get to the moon, but they had the technology to know if we did.
Sure it does.
So, Lynyrd Skynyrd never actually existed?
Two comments:
In an era of 37 trillion deficits, we can’t afford to spend money on this kind of stuff, which is discretionary.
Second, Musk is going to realize that his dream of sending a manned mission to Mars is going to be much easier to achieve if the launch is from the moon. So, he may take care of this for us.
nope, Nasa needs to be shut down completely and a new agency with proper leadership needs to be built from the ground up.
With the rapid improvement of robotics and AI the issue may become academic in just a few years.
Humans may no longer have to risk their lives to accomplish any space mission.
“The Trump administration has effectively flushed $47.5 billion down the toilet, according to Time.”
Not if you adhere to Principles of Finance and Project Accounting Rule #1: Sunk costs are irrelevant to the current decision.
Agreed—NASA is a horse and buggy at this point.
Time to put the horse down and send the buggy to the dump.
Washington Monument ploy.
If a budget is cut, the first thing shut down is the Washington monument.
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