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Trump Administration Wants To End NASA Funding For ISS By 2025 (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-in-sight dept.

According to budget documents seen by The Verge, the Trump administration is preparing to end support for the International Space Station program by 2025. As a result, American astronauts could be grounded on Earth for years with no destination in space until NASA develops new vehicles for its deep space travel plans. From the report: The draft may change before an official budget request is released on February 12th. However, two people familiar with the matter have confirmed to The Verge that the directive will be in the final proposal. We reached out to NASA for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Any budget proposal from the Trump administration will also be subject to scrutiny and approval by Congress. But even announcing the intention to cancel ISS funding could send a signal to NASA's international partners that the U.S. is no longer interested in continuing the program. Many of NASA's partners still have yet to decide if they'd like to continue working on the station beyond 2024. The International Space Station has been an ongoing program for more than two decades. It costs NASA between $3 to $4 billion each year, and represents a more than $87 billion investment from the U.S. government. It's become a major hub for conducting both government and commercial experiments in microgravity, as well as testing out how the human body responds to weightlessness.

6 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Kill it with fire! by Dutchmaan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Something that is both cooperative and science based... I'm surprised Trump didn't nuke it on his first day in office!

  2. Common sense by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Something that is both cooperative and science based... I'm surprised Trump didn't nuke it on his first day in office!

    Let's put partisan politics aside and take a walk down memory lane.

    Those of us who are old enough to remember a time *before* the ISS can also remember the arguments against building it in the first place.

    The ISS had no compelling reason to be built. It was nice and all, held some public relations appeal, and there were a few experiments that could be done on it, but in general it was not a good use of the money. People point to all the innovations and advancements we made due to going to the moon - and that's a fair assessment - but none of that happened at the ISS.

    IIRC, it was mostly *scientists* who argued against building the ISS, and politicians who argued for it.

    There are several potential projects that are far more interesting and more worthy, things such as exoplanet exploration rovers, landing on a comet, new and innovative space telescopes, and perhaps other space-based experiments such as laser interferometer gravitational detectors or telescopes based on photon quantum correlation.

    Perhaps we should let scientists recommend where to spend the money.

    Getting back to partisan identity emotionalism, it would seem that bringing an end to the ISS is more of a "common sense" decision than a "keep the dream alive" decision.

    As well as framing this in disparaging emotionalism, you could just also call this decision "common sense".

    1. Re:Common sense by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The ISS had no compelling reason to be built.

      The Space Shuttle was (partly) justified because it could be used to build a space station.

      So the purpose of the ISS was to give the Space Shuttle someplace to go.

      IIRC, it was mostly *scientists* who argued against building the ISS, and politicians who argued for it.

      Refusing to build the ISS would have meant admitting that the Shuttle was a mistake. In politics, you can never admit that you made a mistake. No matter how stupid and obvious a blunder may be, you just double-down and find a way to rationalize it.

    2. Re:Common sense by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (AC to preserve moderation)

      The compelling reason for ISS being built was to gain thousands of manhours of experience with how the human body behaves in microgravity. As NASA turns over its manned missions to the more adventurous private sector, this information will be worth the gold we spent to get it.

  3. F-35... by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    NASA has spent about $70 billion (2010 USD) on the ISS total. You can probably take that outta petty cash at the Pentagon.

    The F-35 has cost 10 International Space Stations...

    --
    Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  4. Need to start thinking about retiring it anyway by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ISS was only designed with a 15 year life expectancy. It is currently about 18 years old (some modules are older, some newer), and by 2025 it'll be 25 years old. NASA figures the absolute deadline is 2028. So 2025 is a good retirement date if you want a safety margin. It's commensurate with a previous NASA study which green-lighted keeping it operational until 2024.

    Discussion should be focused on what comes next. Not on how to keep the ISS flying. The Space Shuttle was retired for the same reason - its components were designed with only a max 30 year lifespan in mind. Retrofitting it for longer service would've involved replacing all these parts. And if you're going to do that, you might as well design something completely new that takes advantage of new technology that's been developed in the previous 20+ years.