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Universe’s mysteries may never be solved because of Trump’s NASA cuts, experts say
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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"Never" is a long time.
I mean, screw Trump killing NASA, but what they're saying is "they will never be solved... by the US".
Or maybe they're going all the way exceptionalist and assume they're the only ones who ever could. They are not.
I guess it's "never" if it slows down threat detection enough to get us all wiped by an asteroid, but that's a bit of a leap.
Guardian loves their clickbait headlines
And still the most palatable UK outlet, somehow.
The US has enjoyed a commanding lead in the aerospace industry with few countries having kept or caught up over the years. What this means in practice is that we have an enormous base of knowledge here and people that are experts in very specific subject matter. Other countries (with maybe the exception of China) coordinate and consult the US to accomplish pretty much any non-US space mission you've heard of. If you blow that all into the wind as a result of these budget cuts, you are setting back global progress in space and earth science by decades. Sure, many of these people will continue their work in some other facility or country, but a large percentage will opt to leave the industry and those skills will be diminished or lost. It might not be an extinction level event, but it is the kind of setback that you do not recover from in a reasonable period of time.
Hey, like I said, screw Trump nuking NASA.
But, again, never is a long time. All of that is true, but even if this sets back space research and exploration thirty years that slack will be picked up.
Being realistic, though, the goal here isn't so much defunding NASA but letting Trump's corpo supporters privatize it, so their idea is to start making money out of all that talent and expertise being let loose. I certainly hope that a bunch of that slack goes to other public space agencies and the US becomes less relevant and loses that commanding lead, myself.
This makes alot more sense if you replace all the industry euphemisms with the MIC, militarism, imperialism, etc.
And replace "setback" with "major progress for humanity".
We're talking about cuts to Earth and space science missions here, not defense. How is cutting fundamental scientific research "major progress for humanity"?