Can someone help a Danish person understand these cuts? I dislike the current government of USA, but it's not like I can't see the motivation behind wanting Greenland and all the other things they do. Reductions on USA space supremacy is the one area I really can't see a reason behind. Like who benefits from this? In the grander scheme of the entire USA budget these cuts aren't going to be meaningful, if anything, it seems like a waste to not utilize something you've already spend the majority of it's life time cost to get up there.
Hopefully it will lead to a situation where the freed time will be rented out. I mean, xuntian won't be capable of replacing James Webb since it's meant to complement rather than rival.
Is it part of the anti-science? Do they hope they can contract stuff out to the private sector? Or what?
There is no motivation, no plan; it's simple apathy that does this. This is an administration staffed, by design, by incompetent people overseeing public agencies they have no familiarity with. Their shared zeitgeist is "government is the Enemy and must be destroyed". In this sociology, it's an act of disloyalty to be seen to understand, to advocate for and side with, a government institution and its public service.
Loyalty to US science research (like any other US government work) is at odds with loyalty to MAGA: it's a zero-sum question, you're with us or against us. Isaacman failed this test—was too enthusiastic about space science.
It's not apathy, it is weaponized incompetence. It was a contributing factor to Chernobyl. It is funny how the US is so opposed to communism, but copies the mistakes of the soviet union.
Replace 'worked in a shoe factory' with 'were a reality TV star', 'was a fox news agitprop host', or similar for any of the current US leadership in the scene from Chernobyl and it fits like a glove.
> Another factor is funding cuts to both telescopes contained in the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2026 — especially JWST, which would see its operating budget cut by 25 percent relative to planned 2024 operations, from $187 million to $140 million.
Quite a lot of the US right-wing is of the opinion that, basically, science is bad and shouldn't happen, or at the very least that only ideologically correct science should happen (for instance see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doge-mischaracterizes-study-as-... - while part of the story there is that, unsurprisingly, a Musk thing is really incompetent, they were _trying_ to do an ideological purge).
NASA is particularly vulnerable to this because so much of NASA's science is related to climate and weather, and a large part of the US right is still doggedly pretending that global warming isn't happening.
Yes. Despite what others are saying, the people making these decisions are not stupid. This is part of a decades-long, coordinated plan to sow distrust in experts, so people will vote against their own interests to ensure the wealthy & powerful remain so.
It's plainly true that spending several billion preventing climate change now, will prevent having to spend several trillion dollars later. There is no debate about that. But the people with the billions now do not want to give it up, so they have spent decades destroying trust in experts, so people will be tricked into voting for their children to spend trillions later, so that the current billionaires don't have to spend anything now.
It's the same thing pushing anti-vaccine views, even though people getting needlessly sick is obviously bad for the economy. Don't trust your doctor, "do your own research" because you know better than the experts, etc etc. It's all part of getting people to vote against their own interests. A stupid population is easier for the powerful to maintain control over than an educated one.
The people making these decisions are incompetent and unintelligent. But they are also very ambitious and motivated to exact their skewed world view on people.
I actually think it's dangerous to view these people as intelligent, because I really think they believe the things they say. Perhaps, yes, it started out as a way to increase the oligarchy, but I think these people are so far gone that they can't understand any difference now.
> I actually think it's dangerous to view these people as intelligent, because I really think they believe the things they say.
Actually, it's a lot more dangerous to view these people as stupid, because the decisions they make are singularly focused and very, very effective. coldpie is absolutely right, if the policies are intelligent, the policy-makers should be considered intelligent too, so we can focus on the goals and methods pursued by that intelligence.
> but I think these people are so far gone that they can't understand any difference now.
There's no way to be sure, it might be theatrics all the way down... They do gain handsomely from their actions so why call them stupid? It's very unconvincing because it doesn't make sense.
As for the rest of us there's nothing to gain and a lot to lose in viewing the present policies as a string of random stupidity.
Does it make them money? No? Is it something that will make the conservative base unhappy if we eliminate it? No? Then eliminate it.
Greenland is about shipping lanes and minerals.
the greenland thing is a joke, they don't actually want it or care at all, they just want to seem strong and assertive. things are not done for logical or personally-beneficial reasons here.
Science benefits globally, not locally, and the current US government considers such positive externalities to have no importance. Arguments from prestige also get no traction.
Given the US fiscal situation, the benefit is perceived to be the reduction in cost.
There has been a presumption that science is locally important, but this presumption is being questioned, and needs to be better defended.
Other such globalist endeavors, like being world policeman, are also being questioned.
The US "fiscal situation" is a creation of the same sabotage-driven administration. Extreme tax cuts, deferred maintenance, and a bone-chilling police state apparatus is a sure fire way to destroy your economy.
Trump’s administration - stacked with figures who openly parrot Kremlin talking points - doesn’t need to fly a Russian flag to serve Moscow’s interests. Undermining NASA, cutting science funding, and hobbling strategic assets like the James Webb isn’t just budget theatre - it’s part of a broader effort to erode US soft power, fracture alliances, and retreat from global leadership. The US got pwned by Russia and security services are stuck in a paper bag.
Dumb, rich Americans don't know how government works and don't understand what anything is for, even if it's critical for their survival or for the survival of millions of others, or crucial for future economic investment and prosperity. They just want to Retire All Government Employees (RAGE) because this is a utopian libertarian belief that "government is bad" and "costs money for no benefit". That, somehow, everything would be "perfect without government". They feel they are entitled to change everything according to their (uninformed) ideas because they are special and important by being rich. It's way past neoliberal austerity by reckless leadership making massive changes without being careful.
They've never heard of the problems with utopias or throwing out babies with the bathwater.
There has always been a significant section of the US public that's anti-science, and would have posed a strong obstruction to funding any of the space achievements of the 20th century - if not for the fact that the Soviet Union demonstrated space supremacy first. Because of that, space research and technology was made palatable to this demographic by making it a "let's show them commies" thing.
The momentum from that kept things going for a while after the Soviet Union fell, but the inertia has been running out and anti-science sentiment has been raising to the surface in its full form again. The sad truth is that it will most likely be at least another decade to swing things around again, if it's possible at all.
Trump proved to the Republican party that a politician only needs one thing to win: engagement. What's the most engaging policy? Bullshit.
Bullshit gives you free advertising. Bullshit makes all of your political rivals fight you, which makes them look bad. Better yet, your political rivals get busy fighting the bullshit itself, leaving you free to shovel more. There is no such thing as winning a fight in politics: you only win the vote.
Most voters in the US are convinced that there is nothing more to politics than bullshit anyway. This division is rooted in our two-party system. Because of first-past-the-post voting, this is a mathematical inevitability: every vote is a vote against whoever you dislike more strongly. Remember: dislike is not generated by valid criticism as well as it is generated by bullshit engagement. Politics in the US is a team sport, and nothing more.
There is an incredible amount of waste in the US government (both state and federal), almost by design. Departments get fixed budgets for the year. If they don't spend it, their budget for the next year is reduced by that amount. This obviously leads to all kind of perverse incentives to waste resources.
The second factor is politics. The progressive party in the US is trying so hard to be the "good guy" vs Big Bad Trump. Much of this is manufactured outrage, expertly crafted to win elections. ( However, some of it is true. There's some quote out there that the best lies have some grain of truth in them).
So when any conservative actor makes an effort to reign in egregious waste, the opposing party uses their best tactic: claiming victimhood. It's never the waste that is reigned in, no. The cuts always go directly to the most disparaged, "under-served" weakest segment of whatever population they can apply it to. In fact, this party doesn't even acknowledge that there is gov waste at all, or that any of it is borne by the taxpayers, thanks to MMT.
tl;dr there are incredibly wealthy political factions that want Trump out. Any move he makes will be amplified and mischaracterized to maximize outrage and retaliation. You cannot trust the media anymore, sadly.
Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with. The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO. SpaceX, with 8,000 employees and a fraction of government space budgets, now controls 95%+ of all orbit launches worldwide. They outcompete entire continents.
There is no risk structure within government research, and NASA's results of the past few decades shows this. No one paid the price for the SLS being so overpriced, delayed, etc.
What you're missing is that SpaceX could do this because NASA had already done all the difficult research. SpaceX is so successful because it does what private industry does really well: start with something that has already been proven possible and make little improvements on the fringes to streamline and profit from it.
What SpaceX has done is very valuable - let's make no mistake about that. But without decades of NASA experience and subsequent hand-holding with SpaceX engineers, SpaceX wouldn't exist.
NASA is a vehicle for pure scientific research, which is something private industry is absolutely terrible at. Let's be real: as much bluster as Elon has about going to Mars, it's going to take an organization like NASA to do it first before a private company like SpaceX ever attempts to do so.
> Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with.
I'd agree that's generally true when a profit motive is identifiable.
Absent that, if left to the private sector, the research simply doesn't get done at all.
> The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO
You have an incredibly narrow view of what space "research" involves. It's not just about putting payloads in LEO. Were it up to the private sector, the HST wouldn't exist at all.
Whether that's good or bad is a philosophical discussion, but personally, I believe science should be about more than just what is profitable.
(and that's ignoring that, as others have pointed out, SpaceX stands on the shoulders of government-funded giants)
The reality is there's room for both government-funded and private research, and to imply otherwise... well, let's just say we're living in a time of extremely narrow, black-and-white, polarized thinking, and this is an excellent example.
If SpaceX had to distribute their spending like NASA across states/senators/political influence, I doubt they would be anywhere near were they are today. I wouldn’t call this a failure of public science/research/development per se. It‘s a failure of democracy, but maybe it’s also a feature?
Hopefully it will lead to a situation where the freed time will be rented out. I mean, xuntian won't be capable of replacing James Webb since it's meant to complement rather than rival.
Is it part of the anti-science? Do they hope they can contract stuff out to the private sector? Or what?