Trump Adds To NASA Budget, Approves Crewed Mission To Mars (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: President Donald Trump signed a law on Tuesday authorizing funding for a crewed NASA mission to Mars. The new bill (S.442) adds a crewed mission to the red planet as a key NASA objective and authorizes the space agency to direct test human space flight programs that will enable more crewed exploration in deep space. The space agency has $19.5 billion in funding for the 2018 fiscal year, which starts this October. Trump had allocated $19.1 billion for NASA in his budget, which is slightly down from the current year, but still an improvement from the past decade, which saw the end of the space shuttle program. The commander in chief signed the bill surrounded by astronauts and his former Republican rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who both sponsored the bill. Getting to Mars, though, isn't expected to happen during the Trump presidency. NASA has its sights set on getting to the red planet in the 2030s. In the near term, NASA plans to test its Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket, in addition to visiting an asteroid and redirecting a chunk of it into orbit around the moon. Astronauts could later visit the boulder and use the mission to test some of the tools needed for a Mars mission.

Comments

Making NASA Great Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally...

Back to what NASA was founded to do.

Re:Making NASA Great Again

[__aaclcg7560]

On a reduced budget.

Re:Making NASA Great Again

[hey!]

Actually the Wikipedia article on the National Aeronautics and Space Act has an interesting list of the legislation's priorities, starting with priority #1:

The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;

Historically speaking the act, which was signed into law in July of 1958, was a reaction to the "Sputnik Crisis" created by the Soviet launch of an artificial satellite eight months earlier in October of 1957 -- an act which filled Americans with awe and a little dread, knowing that a Soviet device was passing overhead every 96 minutes.

So arguably NASA was founded to achieve preeminence in Earth orbit, not necessarily manned space exploration, which isn't mentioned at all in the legislation. Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight was still three years in the future, and JFKs Rice Moon Speech followed a year and a half after that. That speech is well worth watching, by the way, if all you've ever seen is the "We choose to go to the moon" line.

Manned exploration of the outer solar system wasn't really what the founding of NASA was all about; in fact manned spaceflight has only a single mention in the unamended 1958 text:

... the term "aeronautical and space vehicles" means aircraft, missiles, satellites, and other space vehicles, manned and unmanned, together with related equipment, devices, components, and parts.

The main focus of NASA at its founding was to provide a single agency to coordinate space and spaced-based research, which at the time would have been largely (although not exclusively) Earth-focused.

Re:Making NASA Great Again

[TWX]

The country can not survive without defense and maintaining law-and-order. Everything else is unnecessary and should therefor be done by non-government entities.

Tax-supported public education predates the founding of the United States. It was not a Federal entity, but it was public-funded through taxes.

There's a lot more to the United States than the Constitution, and there was from Day 1, or if you want to be pedantic about it, Day -4361 as the nation was founded almost twelve years before the Constitution was ratified. The basic framework of society already existed even prior to that, the Constitution was not written to wipe the slate clean and start over.

Compare to defense budget

[Anonymous Coward]

We're going to give NASA less than 3%of what we spend on killing people here on Earth.

Constant $? % of PIB? % of Fed Budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget

>The space agency has $19.5 billion in funding for the 2018 fiscal year, which starts this October. Trump had allocated $19.1 billion for NASA in his budget, which is slightly down from the current year, but still an improvement from the past decade, which saw the end of the space shuttle program.

Plain lie.

In the bunker

[PopeRatzo]

Trump could make up NASA's budget shortfall by skipping a few weekend getaways to Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayers' dime and maybe having his wife and son move into the White House after the kid gets out of school in five weeks.

Re:inb4

[ShanghaiBill]

He is cutting NASA's budget for this year (from $19.5B to $19.1B) but is expressing support for a goal that will cost WAY more than that AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE, so paying for it will be somebody else's problem.

Re:Confused

[k6mfw]

I guess you didn't see Chelsea Clinton's tweet: "If you have less money one year versus the previous year, that is called ____ ("cut"), otherwise know as _____ ("less money").

NASAWatch added a Capt Picard facepalm picture.