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

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.

Comments

Just an Acronym Misunderstanding

[turp182]

ISS is too close to ISIS, and therefore, should not be funded.

Anti-science fever rolls on

[quonset]

This shouldn't come as a surprise. This entire administration has been built around two policies: A) if Obama did it, get rid of it and B) mysticism and flimflammery over science.

This is the same man who said he wants to bring back coal despite its known hazards (acid rain and greenhouse gases to name two), and recently upped tariffs on solar panels which will all but destroy the thriving solar industry in this country, an industry which has more jobs than oil, coal and gas combined.

This is the same man who denies climate change, yet says he needs to protect his failing Irish golf course from climate change by building a sea wall.

“If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring. As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase.”

“As with other predictions of global warming and its effects, there is no universal consensus regarding changes in these events,” it states. “Our advice is to assume that the recent average rate of dune recession will not alter greatly in the next few decades, perhaps as far into the future as 2050 as assumed in the [government study] but that subsequently an increase in this rate is more likely than not.”

He's made numerous comments anti-vaccine comments:

        Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!

        — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2014b

“You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — I mean, it looks like just it’s meant for a horse and not for a child,” Trump said. “We had so many instances [in which] a child had a vaccine, and came back and a week back had a tremendous fever, got very very sick, and now is autistic.”

And considered appointing an anti-vaccine proponent to a commission on vaccine safety and "scientific integrity".

That he would now defund the ISS is inline with his anti-science stance. Because he is incapable of seeing any benefit to its continuation (who needs scientific research anyway?), and he can't make a dime off it, it's no good. And especially since Obama touted the numerous successes and scientific knowledge coming from it.