If they are only committing through Artemis III, what is not off the table for cuts is the mobile launcher 2, the advanced solid rocket motors, the EUS and RS-25 production. That is a good start.
Democratic Senators did ask him about that and he said that he wasn't involved in those discussions which is the truth because he is not supposed to do that until he is confirmed (as you are well aware). He said that he reads NASAWatch and other space news but that he was not involved in any of those discussions.
The FY2026 Budget will likely be released in May, a few days after Isaacman is in place. It will be too late at this point. You have to hope that Janet Petro is good at convincing OMB not to go ahead with these cuts. She apparently was behind the reversal of the cuts to probational employees at NASA. Trump seems to have some sympathy for NASA, so perhaps that she will have success in convincing OMB not to go ahead with these cuts.
Any money saved from cancelation of SLS and Orion will not go to science, it would go back to deep space human exploration such as the human exploration of Mars. It is not realistic to think that it would go back to science.
The more realistic option is that Democrats in the Senate will insist on a CR for FY26 and funding for NASA will be frozen but not cut.
In terms of NASA contracts that were cancelled by DOGE, they were not important contracts. A number of them did look like waste (consulting fees for studies of subjects having little to do with NASA's role). Based on Musk's tweet on this subject, it seems that NASA itself proposed these as cuts that could be seen as wasteful.
It seems unlikely that Berger has anything but the topline amounts. The amounts for deep space exploration probably aren't being reduced but that doesn't mean that SLS and Orion are safe.
“whereas no billionaires are signing up to sponsor space telescopes”…is a really funny thing to say when discussing the nomination of Jared Isaacman.
Would be nice if Musk noticed and intervened. But between the appearance of conflict with other DOGE cuts and his loss of political capital after Wisconsin and DOGE falling far short on promised overall federal savings, I’m not sure there’s much he can do. (Musk certainly had no effect when he recently weighed in on tariffs.)
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1910709496382439504
Quote from: VSECOTSPE on 04/11/2025 10:30 pm Would be nice if Musk noticed and intervened. But between the appearance of conflict with other DOGE cuts and his loss of political capital after Wisconsin and DOGE falling far short on promised overall federal savings, I’m not sure there’s much he can do. (Musk certainly had no effect when he recently weighed in on tariffs.)Musk has already signaled he won't be spending whatever limited political capital he has left on this:
That is not what Musk said. He said that he can't intervene in NASA affairs because it would create a conflict of interest. However, he has given his opinion through this tweet which is as much as he can do about it. The same goes with tariffs. Musk can't intervene in those either, it has nothing to do with DOGE and obviously tariffs are bad for Tesla.
Musk has already signaled he won't be spending whatever limited political capital he has left on this:
House/Senate Approps will certainly complain. Might be enough to get OMB to slow walk the actual layoffs long enough to save Roman and/or Goddard.
Depends on if the Admin cares enough to avoid another batch of bad headlines.
NASA is going to push hard for Artemis IV+ now. It's existential. Even in the optimistic scenario, there won't be any flagship science missions in the pipeline for the early 2030s and the ISS will be decommissioned. Artemis is the only major program with a viable future.
All that said, the near-term danger here is not OMB. OMB cuts budgets, but it doesn’t fire people, terminate contracts, or close facilities. That’s normally the responsibility of the affected agencies or departments once cuts become appropriations law. The danger here in these non-normal times is that DOGE will act on these cuts and physically shut down NASA science programs with firings, contract terminations, and facility closures before Congress weighs in and these cuts are adopted or rejected in appropriations. That’s what’s happened at USAID, NIH, NSF, etc.
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but unless dead astronauts are in the headline, the public and the White House don’t care much about negative NASA news cycles. Trump II is currently dealing with headlines about their tariffs tanking markets and their lawyers stonewalling the courts on human deportation errors. NASA is way down the list of headlines and priorities.
Artemis is a dead-end on Orion/SLS and that’s what Isaacman in his testimony and these cuts are protecting. Orion/SLS can’t even match the Apollo mission rate (by a factor of two) and have no hope of matching the Chinese lunar program if Long March 9 delivers on even some of its promise.
And just do the math. It’s a cut that approaches $5B total. $3.4B is coming from NASA science. Only $1.6B or less is coming from the rest of NASA.
Quote from: VSECOTSPE on 04/11/2025 10:30 pmAnd just do the math. It’s a cut that approaches $5B total. $3.4B is coming from NASA science. Only $1.6B or less is coming from the rest of NASA. First, why NASA's budget needs to be cut by $5B.
Just to clarify a few things about how administrations run with respect to NASA and other agencies...The formulation of a new federal budget starts in the late spring/early summer when OMB sends out budget guidelines for the fiscal year in question. The NASA Administrator then submits a budget request to OMB in the fall. OMB reviews the budget request, works through several options with other Executive Office of the President functionaries in an process that I won’t bore you with, and then passes a revised budget back to NASA a short time from now (around Thanksgiving). The NASA Administrator can stand pat on the passback or appeal OMB’s decision. Those appeals can go all the way to the Vice-President or President. Once appeals are done, OMB locks the budget down and sends what is now the President’s Budget Request to print. Normally, the President’s Budget is released and transmitted to Congress in early February.So, while certainly powerful because it controls the pursestrings, OMB is not all-powerful. The NASA Administrator has a large hand in setting the table for budget deliberations with their budget submission. And if they’re not getting a budget back from OMB that they can live with, the NASA Administrator has opportunities to appeal to OMB and beyond in the White House, all the way up to the VPOTUS/POTUS. The best OMB staff work hand-in-glove with the agency to get good incoming budget submissions and to passback good outgoing budgets they know support Administration priorities and that are workable for the agency. While critical and skeptical, OMB staff are experts in the fields of the agencies that they work on, support those agency missions, are trying to improve the agency, and unlike political appointees, usually serve over multiple Administrations. I certainly saw it happen, but very, very rarely are draconian tactics like lowering budget totals with each appeal or threats to demand resignations from agency heads necessary to bring an agency or its leadership into line.
First, why NASA's budget needs to be cut by $5B.
From a good governance perspective, this is exacerbated by what’s not getting cut (or cut much), Orion/SLS. The Orion/SLS budget is mostly spent in Republican strongholds/states: Alabama, Louisiana, Utah, Texas, and Florida. So even though Orion/SLS are arguably the worst performing programs in recent NASA history, they’re still protected in Isaacman’s testimony and from the bulk of the cuts in NASA’s passback. I already sound like a broken record on this, but Trump II is sacrificing NASA’s best, highest-performing programs while protecting NASA’s worst, lowest-performing programs. That’s bass-ackwards, upside-down, awful governance. Do it enough and that’s how great nations become formerly great.
Each situation is different. It is incredibly unlikely that DOGE will be involved in cuts to NASA science. It would be hard to argue that spending on science is waste, fraud and abuse.
You know a lot more about this than I do but passback isn't the final budget, so it is possible that some of these cuts won't end up in the final President's FY26 Budget (see the post below - from you - for more on this).
We don't know if SLS and Orion are getting cut or not in the President's FY26 Budget. The only leak of the passback seems to be related to the NASA science budget.
That would have applied during Trump I or Biden or prior administrations. But OMB under Trump II is different. It’s led by an ideologue in Vought who wants to radically concentrate federal spending powers in the Presidency in favor of conservative causes. He laid this out, including these NASA science cuts, in his Heritage 2025 project. He’s not going to reverse himself, certainly not because a temporary head of agency like Petro asks him to. NASA will lay out the impacts, but they’ll fall on deaf ears at OMB. Isaacman lacks the connections to get around Vought, and the person who could, Musk, has taken himself out of the equation. So the passback will be the President’s FY26 Budget.
Vought was at OMB under Trump I.
Quote from: yg1968 on 04/12/2025 05:54 pmVought was at OMB under Trump I.Only for the last year (it was former congressman Mick Mulvaney for the prior three), and Vought was constrained by the adults (people like former Marine general and Chief of Staff John Kelly) in the White House during Trump I. Those adults are gone under Trump II.
He became Deputy Director at OMB in February 2018 and became acting Director at OMB in January 2019.
Russell Thurlow Vought... has been the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) since February 2025. He held the same position from July 2020 to January 2021.
