from Hacker News

The Presidential budget proposal is a death sentence for NASA

by xqcgrek2 on 6/3/25, 12:59 PM with 13 comments

• by palmotea on 6/3/25, 2:55 PM

  I don't like the reasoning behind these changes, but I'm not morally outraged. Space exploration is really just a luxury product for nerds, and no one actually needs it (despite the numerous sci-fi fantasies that claim otherwise).

  There are a lot of really basic needs that are going unmet in society, so it would totally make sense to redirect money towards away from NASA, or at least to systems and projects that are "dual use" (e.g. not space telescopes and probes). I know that's not what Trump's doing here, but I'd rather some NASA space probe be cut than a similar cut to Medicaid.

• by jmclnx on 6/3/25, 2:02 PM

  Well at least we have China doing real science. Off to backwater status the US goes. Kids, if you can afford it, go to college in non-US countries.

• by dcow on 6/3/25, 1:46 PM

  I used to be a NASA holdout but we’re at a point—we have been for a while now—where NASA is lagging the private sector on essentially every axis. We don’t need the government to kickstart space exploration anymore. Would the average person today think it a good use of public funds to put people on mars?