How might NASA change under Trump? Here’s what is being discussed

"Elon get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term."

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[Wickwick]

"Always accomplish more?" Robotic missions have been to every planet in the solar system, orbiting and even landing on a bunch of them, not to mention gobs of asteroids and comets. One's flying within 3.5M miles of the Sun just now. Then we have robotic space observatories mapping the Universe in every form of radiation from gamma rays to microwaves. Pictures from the Hubble and Webb are iconic.

Humans got to the Moon in 1968, but have gone past low Earth orbit since 1972. Space exploration has been a robotic game for 5 decades.

The only target where humans and robots have both been used is the moon. How many rocks have been returned by robotic missions to the moon and when did that happen vs. the people?

If we were to send a manned mission to Venus, we'd certainly get more out of it than a few minutes of surface time. So yeah, we'll always get more out of a manned mission anywhere.

 

[OrvGull]

It sure is. Also monitoring of critical resources and climate change.

Climate monitoring will be the first thing they shut down. Also Republicans have been pushing to privatize the National Weather Service for years.

 

[OrvGull]

"Always accomplish more?" Robotic missions have been to every planet in the solar system, orbiting and even landing on a bunch of them, not to mention gobs of asteroids and comets. One's flying within 3.5M miles of the Sun just now. Then we have robotic space observatories mapping the Universe in every form of radiation from gamma rays to microwaves. Pictures from the Hubble and Webb are iconic.

If NASA is privatized all that pure science stuff is gone. There's no business case for it. With a manned mission you can at least sell seats.

 

[Voix des Airs]

The only target where humans and robots have both been used is the moon. How many rocks have been returned by robotic missions to the moon and when did that happen vs. the people?

If we were to send a manned mission to Venus, we'd certainly get more out of it than a few minutes of surface time. So yeah, we'll always get more out of a manned mission anywhere.

Incinerated, crushed, dissolved and irradiated?

 

[Sadre]

How's everyone doing?

I banished myself from visiting this forum much after the election. Nothing good to say, don't say it, etc.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to the engineering community. No harm shall ever come to the four laws of thermodynamics under your watch. God help us all.

 

[Elders of Krikkit]

It's like Minnesota. Minneapolis is a wonderfully vibrant industrial and research hub. It's just that almost nobody from outside the Midwest wants to go live there.

As someone born and raised in the upper Midwest and currently living / working in Minneapolis, this is exactly how I want it. Zero degrees Fahrenheit (-17.8°C, 255.4° kelvin) isn’t all that bad; in fact, I find it glorious.

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

NASA, as it functions today, is dying. The SLS/Orion/Gateway projects are consuming all the available funding and bleeding all the other science and exploration projects to death. NASA used to be about pushing exploration with the side affect of bringing jobs to various contractors. Now the jobs aspect has metastasized and is killing the host. Something has to change. Jobs will be lost, centers closed, it is inevitable. Best to do that with some measure of control, and pick out some centers, and some projects to save. THEN, get out of the jobs business, and back in the exploring, risk taking business where NASA belongs. If Isaacman / Trump can even just get NASA and Congress back into the business of taking acceptable risks, that'd be a worthwhile accomplishment.

But it's not Ames or Goddard that need to be shutdown and absorbed, particularly by Marshall, which is in the human spaceflight business. Both are driving robust programs of robotic exploration, and both work at the center of strong associated research communities in their geographic areas.

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

Sorry but I am not seeing exactly any results out of these research centers.

Goddard runs the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, ran COBE, WMAP, scads of other astrophysics missions, and with lots more under development. If you want real space exploration, rather than daydreams, Goddard is doing just fine.

 

[Uragan]

If we were to send a manned mission to Venus, we'd certainly get more out of it than a few minutes of surface time. So yeah, we'll always get more out of a manned mission anywhere.

I’m not sure about this at all.

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

The only target where humans and robots have both been used is the moon. How many rocks have been returned by robotic missions to the moon and when did that happen vs. the people?

If we were to send a manned mission to Venus, we'd certainly get more out of it than a few minutes of surface time. So yeah, we'll always get more out of a manned mission anywhere.

The 5 lunar orbiters mapped the lunar surface in advance of Apollo going there, and were vital for the landing site selections. 3 Ranger missions provided the first good high resolution images of the lunar surface, and 5 Surveyors landed on the surface roboticly well in advance of Apollo 11 returning details in situ information. This was all done with 1960s technology with profound limitations. Even then the lunar rovers flown on the 3 final Apollo missions could have quickly been convert to teleoperation exploration.

You're not going to send people to Jupiter, or any of the outer planets. We don't need people up there to run the astrophysics missions. And as for the Moon, all exploration since 1972, and there has been gobs of it, has been robotic. Hey, I grew up with Apollo - it was what was sensible for the times, but in the 21st century we can do just fine with robots.

 

[whobeme]

How is Musk going to have a hand in any of this without falling afoul of self dealing laws and regulations?

Not that it will matter with the current SCOTUS, since "equal justice under the law" isn't a concept they will uphold.

 

[Wickwick]

Incinerated, crushed, dissolved and irradiated?

Obviously, a human presence on Venus would be quite the engineering challenge. However, the assumption is they come back alive. Therefore, their life support and pressure suits would have to be pretty amazing.

 

[Wickwick]

As someone born and raised in the upper Midwest and currently living / working in Minneapolis, this is exactly how I want it. Zero degrees Fahrenheit (-17.8°C, 255.4° kelvin) isn’t all that bad; in fact, I find it glorious.

But at least you can probably understand why people from elsewhere aren't enamored of the idea of living through your winters. The people in this thread from Huntsville can't seem to fathom that the rest of the country looks at the Deep South as if it's a third world nation.

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

New Horizons wasn't managed by Goddard, that was done out of APL in Laurel, MD.

If you agree that nasa has too many centers (and they absolutely do), you're gonna have to move something. Every center is going to have some argument for why they deserve to exist.

Then you need to listen to those arguments and respect them. Goddard is excellent at its mission, which broadly speaking is developing and operating space-science and astrophysics missions. The operation and performance of JWST exceeded all expectations. They are only a couple of years away from the launch of the Roman Space Telescope. They have decades of accomplished missions and the science that comes from them.

They are also at the center of a robust community engaged in planetary and astrophysics space programs. APL is like a 20 minute drive away, and while capable of running its own missions (such as New Horizons), there is a rich collaboration between GSFC and APL on other missions (like Lucy).

In what way would shutting down Goddard and attempting to rebuild it in Huntsville improve astrophysics and space science missions?

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

The reality is that almost all space science is done with unmanned missions: space telescopes, probes, landers, etc. The manned moon program ran out of gas because the public was no longer willing to pay for it. Are people more interested in manned missions? Yes, but the price tag has cooled their enthusiasm for 50 years, while much cheaper unmanned missions have been working miracles for relative pennies.

Yes! It's amusing that after 50 years of purely robotic exploration of the solar system, as well as a similar parallel experience in astrophysics and space science missions, people still can't think of this as actual space exploration.

 

[OrvGull]

How is Musk going to have a hand in any of this without falling afoul of self dealing laws and regulations?

Easy. The DOGE is not technically an official part of the government, so the rules don't apply to him.

 

[Admiringthehighwatermark]

New Horizons wasn't managed by Goddard, that was done out of APL in Laurel, MD.

If you agree that nasa has too many centers (and they absolutely do), you're gonna have to move something. Every center is going to have some argument for why they deserve to exist.

Interested in understanding why people think 10 field centers is too many. For comparison, look at the number of operating locations an aerospace company with at least $20-$30B in annual revenue has.

 

[SageBrush&Creosote]

Cheap, Fast, Good. They can only pick two, but how much do you want to bet the incoming administration will want all three (and punish others for not achieving it).

You can absolutely have cheap, fast, and good by using existing hardware that has been made good and fast via significant use and improvement and cheap via innovation. SpaceX is a perfect example example of all three.

 

[Tod R. Lauer]

You can absolutely have cheap, fast, and good by using existing hardware that has been made good and fast via significant use and improvement and cheap via innovation. SpaceX is a perfect example example of all three.

It's great to have reliable boosters, and if launch costs become only fraction of the total mission cost, then that's a wonderful development. The question is when you can use existing hardware in the payload. With multiple identical satellites, like Starlink, this again is possible. But for real space exploration or novel scientific missions, the payload is almost always a custom build with specialty hardware. JWST is a perfect example of that, as is the Europa Clipper. I wish we could fly enough missions so that FBC became possible, but no one has ever been able to absorb that risk.

 

[Statistical]

It's great to have reliable boosters, and if launch costs become only fraction of the total mission cost, then that's a wonderful development. The question is when you can use existing hardware in the payload. With multiple identical satellites, like Starlink, this again is possible. But for real space exploration or novel scientific missions, the payload is almost always a custom build with specialty hardware. JWST is a perfect example of that, as is the Europa Clipper. I wish we could fly enough missions so that FBC became possible, but no one has ever been able to absorb that risk.

It isn't a magic bullet but part of the cost of JWST is things like the need for a novel folding structure and doing so with an extreme small mass budget. A higher nominal payload launcher which is still reasonable cost would at least in theory allow a cheaper JWST not cheap but cheaper and you would have more a mass budget for redundant instruments, additional sensors, and larger propellant/coolant storage. Novel science like that is never going to be cheaper but it might be cheaper and more capable and last longer.

 

[InfidelSquirrel]

To an extent I agree. However, CA has at least a dozen Republican House members. Trump's not going to get much of anything done if he pisses off that contingent.

Pffft. Presumably they’d kiss his ass regardless.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

To an extent I agree. However, CA has at least a dozen Republican House members. Trump's not going to get much of anything done if he pisses off that contingent.

None of them are in the Bay Area.

I suspect the logic for closing centers is how well the local economy can absorb those who lose their jobs. In the Bay Area, nobody's going to stay unemployed for long.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

We kicked around how you could cancel SLS and keep Orion over on NSF. The consensus seemed to be that it was hard to do it in a way that made sense.

I suspect that NASA will offer both SLS and Orion as GFE (Government Furnished Equipment). Nobody's gonna bite on SLS, and that will be the end of it.

However, the most likely structural change in the Artemis contracting architecture is to replace the NASA-run Earth-NRHO-Earth leg, which is all that SLS/Orion was good for, with a commercially-provided pair of contracts. SpaceX will get one (using F9/D2 to bring the crew to and from LEO, and a second HLS Starship to do LEO-NRHO-LEOpropulsive, with a goal to eventually replace F9/D2 with a Starship certified for crewed launch and EDL). But the other one could go to Blue, which could launch an Orion on New Glenn, and LockMart could then use the Cislunar Transport, which is the part of Blue HLS architecture that fuels the Blue Moon in NRHO, to push Orion to TLI.

Eventually, Blue will have a crew-rated capsule of their own. But they might be able to get to a working system sooner with Orion. At the very least, it might allow LockMart to finish out the first phase of the OPOC contract. Then they can have Orion shuffle off this mortal coil.

 

[T_Bartholomew]

That assumes that rocket development is at a standstill. Serious propulsion people (i.e., smarter than me) will probably cite:

• early Merlin engine design at SpaceX was based on work done at Marshall. (I can't cite the paper(s), but a serious propulsion guy probably could.)
• nuclear thermal propulsion (i.e., descendant of NERVA) is being pursued at Marshall. I'd rather they get this right before it is farmed out to private industry. I suspect they will have a role in DARPA's DRACO.
• among the earliest adopters of 3D-printed rocket engines, before most of the industry, was Marshall. Prior to this, there was a lot of controversy about how well they could perform or what natural limits 3D-printed material might have for rocket propulsion. (At one time, 3D printed was believed to be naturally weaker.)
• rotating detonation rocket engines (RDRE), which can achieve higher performance (specific impulse) than current practice, are being tested at Marshall, co-developed with industry and academia.
• combined cycle engines that blend rocket and air-breathing jet propulsion are in their infancy. I don't know if Marshall is doing any of this, but it seems to be important for future hypersonic flight.

As for jets, there are concepts for which industry investment is not ready because the R&D costs are too high when you can make a living off other product lines. So some of these see some life as research and academia. The only concept I can put a name on is "blended wing-body", but there are at least a couple of others. Then there is aviation fuel, biofuel; NASA has had a hand in validating it.

It assumes nothing of the sort. None of the potential developments you list is a reason we can't get to space. Getting to space, as the OP specifically stated, is a solved problem. Everything you describe is optimization, for which there is ample space to maneuver, also addressed by the OP.

 

[Zylon]

The Administrator is also the Administration's advocate for space policy to Congress. That was one of ma concerns with Isaacman's appointment. He has no experience playing politician.

And what have we gotten over the last 50 years by having savvy political operators for NASA administrators? Bloated public works projects that actively discourage efficiency and innovation.

The whole system that gave us Shuttle and SLS is rotten to the core, and it is delaying progress in a way that is profoundly disappointing. Congress says, "we can only fund what NASA proposes," and NASA says, "we can only propose what Congress will fund," and the gravy train rolls on, to all 50 states.

Commercial space is finally putting an end to this madness. I hope Isaacman doesn't play politics. I hope he does everything in his power to help kill SLS and Lunar Gateway. I hope he pushes hard for NASA to buy services and fund research, and stop providing corporate welfare to Bechtel and Lockheed Martin.

Shockingly, to me at least, we may have a realistic shot of seeing NASA cured of the pork barrel necrosis that has been slowly infecting it since Apollo. Honestly, I trust Musk and Bezos and Beck with the future of spaceflight far more than I ever trusted Shelby and Hatch.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

In fact it has nine. But anyway Ames is in a "blue" district* so I'm not so sure it would very much bother Republican representatives or their districts' voters.

* interestingly, its Democrat majority in November was the smallest among the congressional districts bordering San Francisco Bay. But not really small. Like ~ 58% D

I'm sure Republicans are interested in someday winning that district, and winning statewide races as a whole, again. CA had a Republican governor not that long ago, and a Republican governor from California served two terms as POTUS 40 years ago, and statewide the Republicans don't poll that far behind the Dems, so the state isn't so solidly blue as is often thought. Were the GOP able to notch CA's Electoral College votes it would be tantamount to the Dems winning Texas: if they could keep it in their win column they'd be favorites to win every cycle. Eviscerating treasured NASA labs and field centers to ship them off to Hickville, Alabama would not be a wise first step in endearing themselves to Californians.

 

[OrvGull]

statewide the Republicans don't poll that far behind the Dems, so the state isn't so solidly blue as is often thought.

Uh, Harris beat Trump by 20 points there. That's pretty solid.

If Republicans thought the state was winnable, Trump wouldn't be talking about withholding disaster aid from it. I think any way he can find to punish the state, he will -- including moving NASA labs and other government facilities out.

 

[NetMage]

The question is when you can use existing hardware in the payload. With multiple identical satellites, like Starlink, this again is possible. But for real space exploration or novel scientific missions, the payload is almost always a custom build with specialty hardware. JWST is a perfect example of that, as is the Europa Clipper. I wish we could fly enough missions so that FBC became possible, but no one has ever been able to absorb that risk.

But does it need to be? Starshield shows the potential of using common portions combined with custom portions to reduce the cost and time required - perhaps a common platform could be developed for probes as well.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

Uh, Harris beat Trump by 20 points there. That's pretty solid.

If Republicans thought the state was winnable, Trump wouldn't be talking about withholding disaster aid from it. I think any way he can find to punish the state, he will -- including moving NASA labs and other government facilities out.

What Trump wants to do and what Republicans will let him do are two different things. There are California Republicans who would very much like to not carry the weight of running NASA out of the state on their future electoral ambitions, even if they don't represent the relevant districts at the moment.

 

[OrvGull]

What Trump wants to do and what Republicans will let him do are two different things.

No, they're not. Republicans are way too afraid of him and his supporters to buck him. Anyone who stands up to him will get a primary challenge, and they know it.

There are California Republicans who would very much like to not carry the weight of running NASA out of the state on their future electoral ambitions, even if they don't represent the relevant districts at the moment.

Republican voters don't care about what benefits them, only about whether people they hate are getting hurt. Smarty-pants scientists are on that list.

 

[noteonleaf]

Landing, sure. A manned flyby or even orbital mission could potentially be done. It'd be very Apollo in terms of risk, very balls to the wall in terms of execution. I don't see it happening in today's safety culture but it's kinda fun to imagine it happening. Kinda like that Apollo Applications manned Venus flyby idea.

Landing, sure. A manned flyby or even orbital mission could potentially be done. It'd be very Apollo in terms of risk, very balls to the wall in terms of execution. I don't see it happening in today's safety culture but it's kinda fun to imagine it happening. Kinda like that Apollo Applications manned Venus flyby idea.

 

[hisnyc]

Not sure what y'all's problem with Huntsville is, other than general dislike of seeing your political opponents have nice things happen to them. It makes far more sense to keep a center in Huntsville than someplace like Goddard, for example.

Nothing against Huntsville, but I'm not sure why shutting down other sites where people have made their lives is necessarily viewed as a positive either.

And...

And is it particularly healthy for the overall program? There are going to be a number of people who will have issues living under Alabama's social policies. How much a factor this will be, I'm not sure, but I'm concerned it will unnecessarily cut down the talent pool.

 

[astroinmd]

I'm not sure how one moves all of Ames without curtailing the aerospace research done there. Ames is the home to several unique research facilities that would be stupidly expensive to rebuild in Alabama. It would take longer than Trump's presidency to finish duplicating some of these.

Of course, it would be very NASA-like to remove their only location in Silicon Valley and make working for them even less attractive than it already is. Nothing says "let's hire the best and most innovative engineers!" like leaving the Bay Area and consolidating in one of the least-educated states in the union. Hell, why not move to Mississippi?

Same with GSFC and its integration and test facilities, NSN, and other capabilities. What folks outside of NASA tend to see in these reorg efforts is a bunch of people in offices with computers and they think moving a bunch of people in offices with computers is no big deal. It's a bit more complicated than that.

 

[Dtiffster]

No, they're not. Republicans are way too afraid of him and his supporters to buck him. Anyone who stands up to him will get a primary challenge, and they know it.

Republican voters don't care about what benefits them, only about whether people they hate are getting hurt. Smarty-pants scientists are on that list.

Trump didn't just win that election with Republican or Republican leaning votes, he had to peel off some people that don't automatically buy his b.s. We'll have to see, but if the shutdown fight was emblematic of what's coming up Trump's in trouble. Opinion polls are already showing signs of buyers remorse with Trump (and he's walking back promises) and he hasn't even taken office yet. Republicans don't cower in fear over him because he's such an intimidating figure, they do it because they're afraid of being primaried (a threat he's carried out many times). The problem is that the primary threat doesn't work everywhere, some districts are too moderate for the MAGAs either to unseat the moderate Republican in the primary or for a kookie candidate to win if they manage that feat. With the house advantage so narrow he can only really afford to lose 2 votes at most, three dozen just told him to pound sand over the last minute debt ceiling nonsense. This term at least he'll be able to brow beat the 'freedom caucus' to get inline, but every legislative fight in this congress is going to be a tight rope even without talking about the Senate (who have to win statewide elections and are the ones that tended to buck him in his first term).

Don't get me wrong I'm sure they will take a lot of crap from him in the name of racking up some legislative wins, but those expecting Trump to wield absolute power are deluding themselves. Inflation is being stubborn and Trump is completely capable of screwing up the soft landing. It's a completely different dynamic from his first term where he just switched from talking about how shitty a perfectly good economy was to claiming credit for it, he has to own the result of what he does. As bad as the Dems are at messaging if his tariff nonsense sends prices rising while he reinstates tax cuts for the rich, in two years time you'll be looking at another blue wave and Trump will be a term limited lame duck. I just don't believe he has the political savviness to navigate this tricky moment.

 

[uhuznaa]

The only target where humans and robots have both been used is the moon. How many rocks have been returned by robotic missions to the moon and when did that happen vs. the people?

These comparisons are always maddening, mostly because both sides are totally right in a way.

Yes, when you compare robotic and crewed missions dollar-to-dollar robotic missions are clearly more efficient when it comes to science. This is true just because for the effort you need for a robotic mission you wouldn't get even a single crew member there and back alive. And returning rocks from the Moon is much cheaper when you use robots instead of crews, this was true even back then and is much more true today. Also the "crews can cover much more ground in a much shorter time than robots" is mostly true because robots don't need to breath and eat and drink all the time. You can afford to be slow with them just because you can. Covering ground as quickly as possible isn't science in itself. Being able to go slow and be painstakingly cautious isn't a bug, it's a feature when it comes to science.

On the other hand exactly because robotic missions scale down so much better than crewed missions this means your scale is severely limited. Like, we we have all reasons to assume that still possibly extant (simple) life on Mars will be deep underground, where there's water and warmth and pressure. Even on Earth it's assumed that about 95% of simple life (bacteria etc.) lives deep underground. Any life that doesn't need sunlight is better off down there: Much more stable environment in every way, no radiation, more pressure and higher temperatures help with basically every chemical reaction it needs.

But with small and with this affordable robotic probes you just can't get down there on Mars, you can do hardly more than to scratch at the surface, exactly what all probes on Mars did up to now. We managed to dig in there hardly more than mere inches, sometimes even by accident. Now land a Starship with 100 t of hardware on Mars, have it drill into the ground for water, melt and pump it out and filter it for making propellants: Now you will process thousands of tons of water and even just the tailings from the filters will tell you more than a whole army of small robot could ever do. And you never would do things at this scale with robotic missions. But you would do this for crewed missions because you have to, for totally unrelated reasons.

So once you're there and do things at much bigger scales and faster you can turn this into an advantage.

Merry days to all of you!

 

[Statistical]

No, they're not. Republicans are way too afraid of him and his supporters to buck him. Anyone who stands up to him will get a primary challenge, and they know it.

People keep claiming that and yet Republicans refused to lift the debt ceiling for him. The continuing resolution that passed is nearly identical to the prior one that failed without lifting the debt ceiling. So the only thing which didn't pass was specifically the one thing Trump demanded. They axed nomination of Gaetz. Trump hasn't even taken office yet and they are already not really giving a shit what he says. Hell it was President Elon Musk not Trump that killed the first spending bill.

Most Republicans now know Trump is only negatives going forward. He has no real coatails. He doesn't raise money for down ticket races. He isn't particularly popular with the electorate (and that popularity will tank massively by 2028). This doesn't mean Republicans are good guys. They have their own terrible agenda to unleash over the next couple years but they aren't rubber stamps for Trump. If anything Trump is the drooling half senile idiot rubber stamp for their agenda.

So they will throw a few bones to him from time to time but in general are going to do what they want and prepare for a post-Trump world.

 

[OrvGull]

Most Republicans now know Trump is only negatives going forward. He has no real coatails. He doesn't raise money for down ticket races.

No, but he can sure scare money off. Look at the way billionaires are all lining up to kiss his ring. They're not going to contribute to candidates that he opposes. He's cowed news organizations into not doing negative reporting about him, too, especially broadcast media whose licenses are at stake.

He isn't particularly popular with the electorate (and that popularity will tank massively by 2028).

He was more popular this time than 2016, and they lined up behind him then.

Him leaving in 2028 is also the optimistic position. He's hinted he won't and he has four years to replace military leaders with people who will back a coup and make it possible for him to stay indefinitely. I think he's more likely than not to leave but the fact that it's even in question is a pretty serious warning sign.