When President Trump unveiled the outline of his first federal budget proposal this past week, many analysts described it as a mixed bag for America’s space program. We’d call it a missed opportunity.
There’s bad news and good news for space. While Trump proposed cutting $200 million, or about 1 percent, from NASA’s $19.3 billion budget this year, the space agency would fare much better than other non-defense agencies; the EPA, for example, is the target of a proposed 31 percent cut. The president called for canceling NASA’s mission to send astronauts to an asteroid, but preserving funding to develop the agency’s next rocket and crew vehicle. He advocated a deep cut in NASA’s Earth science programs, but maintained support for a robotic mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
However, the president’s plan falls short of revitalizing and redirecting the manned space program after years of sluggishness and drift under President Obama. It fails to meet the high expectations Trump created last month in his first speech to Congress, when he declared, “American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.”
Trump’s budget outline doesn’t take a side in the ongoing debate over whether the moon or Mars should be NASA’s next destination for U.S. astronauts. And its lower bottom line for NASA will make it harder for the agency to dig out of the rut it’s been stuck in since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. U.S. astronauts have been forced ever since to hitch rides to and from the International Space Station on Russian rockets. A NASA backed effort to support private rocketeers SpaceX and Boeing in developing the capability to carry crew to the station is behind schedule due to insufficient funding.
A couple of days before the president unveiled his budget outline, the Planetary Society, a foundation dedicated to promoting space exploration, released a video letter from CEO and “Science Guy” Bill Nye with five recommendations on space for the president. One was to remain focused on a goal of sending astronauts to Mars. Another was to raise NASA’s budget 5 percent a year for the next five years. Nye asserted that funding increases at this modest level would keep the space agency on course to reach the Red Planet by the 2030s.
The series of spending hikes recommended by the society would raise NASA’s budget to $24.6 billion by 2022. This total hike of $5.3 billion is puny next to the $1 trillion that the president wants to invest in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. And as Nye said in the video letter, NASA funding “is money that gets spent on Earth, in the United States, and supports tens of thousands of jobs across the country” — a pitch that should especially resonate with the president.
Trump’s budget reflects at least one of the society’s recommendations: “Embrace commercial space.” He would continue Obama’s policy of supporting companies in developing rockets to carry U.S. astronauts to low Earth orbit, and would hand over more responsibility for the space station and satellites to the private sector. This is a smart way to free more of NASA’s limited resources for more-distant missions.
Trump still hasn’t named his NASA administrator. He has yet to follow through on a promise made by two aides during his campaign to reconstitute the National Space Council under the leadership of Vice President Mike Pence. He’s expected to release more details on his budget in the coming weeks. It’s possible his plans for space could become clearer, and better.
Meanwhile, the focus will shift to Congress, where members draft and pass the budgets that actually become law. Congress recently approved a bill sponsored by Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson that would direct NASA to send humans to Mars in the next 25 years. It also would continue support for SpaceX and Boeing as they develop rockets to carry U.S. astronauts. It would increase NASA’s budget — though just 1 percent next year, not the 5 percent proposed by the Planetary Society.
Unlike most other issues and agencies in Washington, D.C., the space program and NASA enjoy bipartisan support. Historically, investments in space have yielded scientific and technological breakthroughs and elevated America’s international prestige. In Florida, the nation’s launching pad, at least 11,600 aerospace companies with 132,000 employees contribute more than $17 billion a year to the state’s economy.
Congress would be wise to build on what Trump has proposed, and make sure the space program is part of any infrastructure plan they might pass at the president’s initiative.
