Oh, y’all, this is bad. This is very bad. NASA is looking at cuts to a number of important programs, which, once the connections are turned off, may be impossible to restart. Impossible. Why can’t they make cuts elsewhere? We *need* those programs. Dadgum! Sure, NASA could possibly have been bloated, but please don’t do those cuts that may be something from DOGE. Please look FIRST. From the BBC:
The row between Donald Trump and Elon Musk over a major spending bill has exacerbated uncertainty over the future of NASA’s budget, which is facing deep cuts. The space agency has published its budget request to Congress, which would see funding for science projects cut by nearly half. Forty science missions, which are in development or in space already, are in line to be stood down.
The ones in space already? If they’re shut off, they pretty much can’t be restarted, especially the ones further out in the solar system. That would be quite a loss for all that they are doing. A *big* loss.
The president has threatened to withdraw federal contracts with Musk’s company, SpaceX. NASA relies on the firm’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet to resupply the International Space Station with crew and supplies. The space agency also expects to use its Starship rocket to send astronauts to the Moon and eventually to Mars once it has been developed. Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University, said that the uncertainty was having a “chilling impact” on the human space program. “The astonishing exchanges, snap decisions, and U turns we’ve witnessed in the last week undermine the very foundations that we build our ambitions on. “Space science and exploration relies upon long-term planning and cooperation between government, companies, and academic institutions.”
WHAM. The man is right. Many of these programs are put in place with the cooperation of multiple places. This isn’t a one-man show, after all. It’s many men and women who provide the knowledge and engineering for all these efforts. Even Musk’s Falcon 9 Dragon program, while “supposedly” belonging to one man, is really a team effort. Dragon takes people back and forth to the International Space Station. That’s a big one. Blue Origin is nowhere near being ready to do that. Can you imagine the mess if Dragon were decommissioned? Oof.
We have three programs for Venus, one getting ready to launch. There are two for Earth. FOUR for Mars. One for Jupiter. One out at Pluto and THAT one *really* doesn’t need to be turned off. All of these programs do not need to be turned off. They are all serving a fairly major purpose.
Aside from the feud between the President and Mr Musk, there is also concern about deep cuts requested by the White House to NASA’s budget. According to Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, which promotes space exploration, the potential cuts represent “the biggest crisis ever to face the US space program”. NASA has said that its request to reduce its overall budget by nearly a quarter “aligns (its) science and technology portfolios to missions essential for the exploration of the Moon and Mars”. Dr Adam Baker, a space analyst at Cranfield University, told BBC News that if these proposals are approved by Congress, it would fundamentally shift the agency’s focus. “President Trump is repurposing NASA for two things: to land astronauts on the Moon before the Chinese and to have astronauts plant a US flag on Mars. Everything else is secondary.”
Secondary? Excuse me? I am nearly incoherent about this. The “secondary” programs are pretty darn important. But our esteemed excuse for a President doesn’t think that way. And you *know* he doesn’t like to read things. Could you imagine trying to turn NASA’s budget into a Fox News show? You’d have to give it to him in little gulps, but then who knows if he’ll remember the first part or not. By the way, you can read the much longer article here. I’m afraid of what might actually happen. All these programs, gone. Dannnnnnng. Thanks for sticking with me!
*****From Ursula ******
Friends, we’re in a dark passage here. We started losing traffic last November, when the entire country got fed up with politics. Added to that have been my health problems over the past two months. We’re falling behind financially. If you can help in any way, it would be appreciated. I’m doing my best to get back in the saddle again. Thank you.
“President Trump is repurposing NASA for two things: to land astronauts on the Moon before the Chinese and to have astronauts plant a US flag on Mars.”
Umm, unless I’m misremembering my history, the US has already landed astronauts on the Moon. We did that back in 1969 and had our last astronauts walk there in 1972. And a total of TWELVE astronauts actually walked on the surface of the Moon in those years (and four of them–Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke and Harrison Schmitt–are still alive at this time).
So, I don’t understand why Dr Baker (who stated NASA’s new “repurposing” quoted above) has seemed to forget this or why the folks at NASA (presumably when informed of their “new” purposes) failed to inform Drumpf that we already had people on the Moon. The Chinese can NEVER claim otherwise.
I’m an old fart so I was lucky enough to be alive and also old enough to have a sense of the magnitude of it all when we made the moon landings. Looking at how things are now, and looking back to those days it’s far more extraordinary than people realize. People, especially every generation younger than my own simply can’t wrap their brains around some of it. For example a typical smart phone has, by orders of magnitude far more computing power (both speed and memory) that we used to travel both to and back from the moon. Hell, on the lunar lander the AGS and PINGS computers (NASA tried to have a backup for everything) the operating speeds were 36 and 13 BITS (not megabytes but mere Bits) per second! The on-board computers were clunky by today’s standards with their CORE-Rope technology but what they lacked in memory and speed they made up for with robustness and reliability. How precise did they have to be?
Think about the trip out, having to aim at a target that was itself moving. AND that the whole CM/LM tandem was being slowed down on the trip by the pull of the earth’s gravity. Given fuel constraints (so they’d be able to leave the moon’s orbit and come home) they had to navigate to just the right point in space to escape our gravity and let the moon’s pull them forward AND on a course that would take them on a circumlunar trajectory! Some short bursts for braking on the far side would put them in orbit but if something went wrong (like on Apollo 13) they’d have a shot at getting back. For the trip home again they had to hit a moving target as the earth was of course making its own orbit around the sun. Re-entry is amazing. Regardless of any of the different spacecraft that have done it the speeds are such that if you hit the atmosphere at too shallow an angle you skip off and head out into space. And die. Too steep and you burn up. And die. Coming back from the moon the re-entry corridor is so narrow it’s hard to fathom. If you use a softball as the moon and a basketball as the earth and set them 14 feet apart the spacecraft has to hit a corridor/target less thick than a sheet of paper!
But we did it. Again and again proving we’d mastered technology that would allow us to do it whenever we wanted. It was of course hugely expensive which is why NASA (stupidly) cut the program short. Which reinforces what Susan wrote – once you shut this stuff down starting it back up again is if not impossible then quite difficult. I’ve given you just a taste of what it took back then and what we invented to be able to do it. Yet will all the advances it’s still a crapshoot to land on the moon. Computer advances and AI notwithstanding spacecraft that try are more likely to crash than safely touch down!
Mars? There’s a reason why putting a spacecraft down on that planet involves what in the parlance of NASA and everyone else who’s tried as “seven minutes of terror” because of so much that can happen in trying to guide the thing down through the thin Martian atmosphere. It would take multiple articles to explain why. We need to get good at going “only” to the moon and back again before we attempt to send humans to Mars. And given how long a crewed mission would take the effects on the bodies of those who make the trip and being able to deal with them still haven’t been dealt with!
We have awesome uncrewed spacecraft exploring our solar system and beyond. With what is by today’s standards ancient technology that’s been exposed to the harsh and unforgiving enviornment of space it’s incredible that engineers have kept many functioning and providing priceless data years, even in some cases DECADES past their design life. Shut those things down and all that is over. There will hopefully come a time when we need the data they provide to create even more incredible space exporation missions. Shutting down Apollo as abruptly and so thoroughly as they did should be a warning.
There’s no damned reason in hell to go to fawlking Mars! Except maybe to send Musk there on a one-way trip. I took the control room tour in Houston and marveled at the crudity of the computer terminals, though there wrer numerous, but we sent men to the moon and back several times.
These billionaires want to take over the world but when they do, there’s nothing left to do but destroy the world.
TAX THE BILLIONAIRES 90%!