Republicans have to make budget cuts if they are going to deliver on their promise to reduce the budget deficit and start to chip away at our national debt.
The early budget plans are showing some massive cuts to the NASA program, something of which Elon Musk, who has a vested interest, does not support.
If the budget goes through as is, NASA would see its science budget trimmed by about 50%.
As the legislation reads right now, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is slated to receive just shy of $4 billion, which is a massive cut from the previous budget of $7.3 billion.
NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens, after the cuts were announced, stated, “NASA has received the fiscal year 2026 budget passback from the Office of Management and Budget, and has begun the deliberative process.”
Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, is very concerned about the cuts, stating, “This is an extinction-level event for NASA science. It needlessly terminates functional, productive science missions and cancels new missions currently being built, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in the process. This is neither efficient nor smart budgeting.”
After the cuts were announced, Musk did not hide the fact that he thought cutting this budget would be a mistake by the administration.
He stated, “Troubling. I am very much in favor of science, but unfortunately cannot participate in NASA budget discussions, due to SpaceX being a major contractor to NASA.”
That statement sounds innocent enough, but that is a clear rebuke on the budget cuts. This also happens to becoming while Musk is in a very public feud with Trump’s main economic adviser, Peter Navarro.
And I get why Musk does not want to see cuts… NASA pays him a lot of money.
Musk very much has vested interest in how much money NASA receives because a lot of that money goes out the door to SpaceX, which is owned by Musk.
For instance, in 2021, NASA gave SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a new space vessel for long-term space exploration.
At the time, NASA stated, "NASA is getting ready to send astronauts to explore more of the Moon as part of the Artemis program. At least one of those astronauts will make history as the first woman on the Moon. Another goal of the Artemis program includes landing the first person of color on the lunar surface."
Over the last decade, Musk and SpaceX have received $18 billion in contracts from our government, with $13 billion of that coming from NASA. This just gives Democrats more to attack the Trump administration on, even though many of these juicy contracts for SpaceX were awarded during the Biden administration. You see, facts matter little to the mainstream media, so get ready to hear it, just like when Rachel Maddow brought up a military contract for Tesla and its cybertrucks claiming it was Trump, when it was actually the Biden administration that was exploring the deal (which the Trump administration stated would not be made). So, like I said… facts matter little to the mainstream media these days.
