Trump’s NASA Budget — Shifting From Star Trek to Dune?

The space community is still trying to grasp the implications of the Trump Administration’s proposal to slice almost 25 percent out of NASA’s budget, adding money for Moon-to-Mars and cutting it everywhere else. Details are pending and some hope the proposal never becomes reality once a NASA Administrator is in place and Congress weighs in, but for now the proposal is the plan. One former NASA official wonders if it signals a seismic shift, from the bright space future envisioned in Star Trek to the darker world of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

At a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) webinar on NASA’s budget today, NASA’s former Chief Economist Alex MacDonald raised that prospect. MacDonald left the agency at the end of last year and is now a non-resident senior associate at CSIS.

CSIS’s Clayton Swope moderated the discussion with MacDonald and Mike French, NASA Chief of Staff under Charlie Bolden, later at the Aerospace Industries Association, and now with his own consulting firm. After talking through the proposed 47 percent cut to NASA’s science portfolio and the nationwide workforce impacts it presages at NASA centers and universities, MacDonald mused about the signal it sends.

“I think this is one of the hard things for the community, dealing with the shift from kind of living in the Star Trek ideal where we did space exploration for science, for international partnerships, peaceful exploration. And we’re moving maybe a little bit more into the Dune world where spaceflight is about power and resources and conflict. That’s the hard part of what the community is struggling with. Whether or not that needs to happen is a different discussion, but I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of reactions.” — Alex MacDonald

The “skinny” budget that provides top-line numbers, but no details, would cut both NASA’s science and space technology portfolios in half, eliminate STEM engagement, reduce crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station, and slice one-third of the money from aeronautics research.

Not only that, but French zeroed in on the implications of the 40 percent reduction to Safety, Security and Mission Services (SSMS). An infrastructure and internal operations account, about half of SSMS’s $3 billion “pays for people that work across directorates.” Unlike other parts of the agency where cuts can be handled by ending programs or buying things differently, for infrastructure there’s “a certain point where you can’t just do less.” Absorbing a loss of that magnitude in one year would require “a completely different organizational model” and reductions in force.

The Moon-to-Mars program is the only part of NASA that would get an increase. The existing Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface would get over $7 billion, although significant changes are in store after Artemis III, the mission that is to land U.S. astronauts on the Moon two years from now. The proposal would kill NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew spacecraft and replace them with commercial alternatives and eliminate the international Gateway lunar space station, a transit point between Earth and the lunar surface.

Another $1 billion would be provided for “Mars-focused” programs in response to President Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of Elon Musk’s passion to make humanity a multi-planet species by sending millions of people to Mars.

There was concern Trump would pivot NASA away from the Moon to focus only on Mars, but French credited Congress, especially Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), with making clear they want to stick with the plan — Moon first, then Mars.  Cruz and Babin chair the House and Senate committees that oversee NASA. Texas is home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Babin’s district.

Cruz chairs the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and hammered home the point during Jared Isaacman’s nomination hearing to be the next NASA Administrator. Isaacman surprised many by responding that he thinks NASA can pursue human missions to the Moon and Mars at the same time within NASA’s existing budget. He also strongly supported NASA’s science program, though. If confirmed by the full Senate, he may have to figure out how to do it all with 24.3 percent less money.

In fact, French pointed out that the reduction is even bigger than it seems because NASA’s budget already was cut in FY2024 and FY2025. Research and development agencies like NASA that take years to build and launch missions make budget plans 5 years out or more. Compared to the budget NASA thought it would have two years ago, the cut is much deeper.

“NASA had about 10 years of budget growth that ended in the last couple of years. The Continuing Resolution [for FY2025] was already a lower number than they were planning.  If you go back to what NASA was planning for this coming year [FY2026], it’s really an $8 billion reduction.”  — Mike French

From a broader perspective, another paradigm change could be that by the end of the decade NASA would not be operating any human space projects. It would all be in the hands of the private sector. NASA has been moving toward Public Private Partnerships since the 2006 commercial cargo program, which led to commercial crew, which led to PPPs for many portions of the Artemis program. But NASA still had its own projects– the ISS now, and Gateway, SLS, and Orion for the future. Those all would be gone under this proposal.

What’s not clear is who would operate facilities on the lunar surface, NASA or the private sector.  MacDonald asked if the private sector would do it without a government customer. “If you’re building an economy you need some sort of source for the demand. … The reason we were able to get commercial crew and cargo was because we had the ISS. We had a national need to continue to resupply that vehicle.” The same model may be needed for the Moon with “a commitment to national and international lunar research facilities … owned and operated by NASA and international governments” in order to get the same demand generation.

Also left unanswered in the skinny budget is the fate of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Destinations, or CLD, program through which NASA plans to help companies build commercial replacements for the ISS.

Until now at least, the prevailing view has been that the United States must not cede LEO to China and always have access to U.S. facilities there to conduct microgravity research for its own purposes.  China already has a permanently occupied space station, Tiangong-3, with crews that rotate on roughly 6-month schedules like the ISS.

MacDonald pointed out that U.S. crew members on the ISS conduct a lot of scientific research for companies and universities through the ISS National Lab.  Part of the idea is that it will stimulate commercial demand for microgravity research that would be the primary market for the CLDs.  If the Trump Administration reduces U.S. use of the ISS, less science will be conducted. If that happens, “how is the ecosystem developing momentum that allows investors to see progress” that will lead to commercial space stations, he asked.

The bottom line is that the budget proposal calls for profound changes to NASA programmatically and organizationally, but it’s not clear if all factors were considered during its formulation. In fact, Politico reported today “no one knows who’s in charge of Trump’s dramatic space policy.”

The full budget isn’t expected until June. Congress rarely passes appropriations bills by October 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, even when the budget is submitted on time in February. A Continuing Resolution that essentially holds agencies to their current spending levels is a virtual certainty. But the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which formulated the skinny budget, directs agencies on how to spend the money.  If OMB instructs NASA to operate at the low level of the request, French described it as “a very interesting environment.” MacDonald added that NASA still is working on its FY2025 operating plan  — details of how it plans to spend the money Congress appropriated for FY2025  — and the way “impoundment is being interpreted” by the White House, OMB might try to implement some of the changes through the operating plan rather than waiting for FY2026, and that’s “uncharted” territory.