Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#211

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #17

pixl97 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oligarchs first... much like Russia.

That was at first, then Putin started having them murdered. If you think about it, there isn't much of a reason for the individual that is allowed to have all the power to share it with anybody.

So my, admittedly distant, understanding of modern Russia is that the FSB and Oligarchs have formed a symbiotic relationship, with Putin as its fulcrum.

The FSB secure the oligarchs, and prevent them from being prosecuted for siphoning off billions from the Russian economy. These get distributed down through to FSB leadership as bribes. The whole thing stays loyal to whatever leadership coalition keeps it going. Putin has proved quite good at that.

This arrangement is also underscored by a sort of modern descendent of Chekism. There's an ideological component besides all the corrupt money making.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#212

Post by Eisenstein » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

mostlysimilar wrote: post #205

labster wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans want looting and authoritarianism, so that’s what they’re getting. There’s no excuses here after a majority of people voted for Trump’s return, with his repeated promises that he wouldn’t be held back this time around. We got exactly what we voted for — worldwide tariffs, sending the military to round up migrants, a military parade with tanks in DC, antivax boards — all of these things he talked about befor…

It's not even remotely helpful to keep parroting "this is what Americans wanted." Not only do Trump voters not represent a majority of Americans, the media landscape is so fractured that many people did not know what they were voting for and just wanted cheaper groceries. Is that stupid and naive? Yes. But it's also stupid and naive to generalize and say "Americans want this."

I think what they are saying is 'actions have consequences'.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#213

Post by user9999999999 » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #31

Well, yes, that's the point. Authoritarians want to consolidate power and loot wealth, not improve things or make the world a better place.

> or make the world a better place.

Exactly. The past 163 days have only been about hurting people and cutting things down. There's no hopeful or optimistic rhetoric. Its just hate after hate after hate and blame.

You cannot build a great country on this. But you most certainly can tear one down.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#214

Post by awkwardpotato » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #92

davidw wrote: post #31

Well, yes, that's the point. Authoritarians want to consolidate power and loot wealth, not improve things or make the world a better place.

It is the art of the deal with Trump and I would say that he is a narcissist rather than authoritarian. Trump has a massive ego and I would have expected him to want the biggest rockets, and to pain them gold. If he did then I would denounce him for spending money on space when America has trillions of debt. I don't disagree with him on everything he says just because he said it. So, with space, my honest take is tha…

> The space race never was about science and exploration

To just blatantly ignore the decades of widely documented science NASA has done or contributed to is wild. I understand it raises your taxes by 0.5%, but really?? NASA is responsible for a significant portion of what we know about space and our neighboring planets, and that's if you ignore the amount of research and discoveries they've made about Earth, the planet that "always will be" our home.

Even if you ignore the actual scientific discovers, NASA and the space race are (partially or) directly responsible for inventions that benefit your everyday life. CT Scans, improved insulin pumps, scratch-resistant lenses, baby formula, memory foam, etc. You can find a collection of their contributions to your life here[0], though the page seems broken for me.

In 2021, for every dollar we put into NASA, it generated ~$3 in economic value. To say all NASA does is build rockets is just incorrect, NASA's benefit comes from the science they actively do with satellites, telescopes, probes, rovers, etc.

> Sure, Voyager went somewhere, but it was all a cover.

Past a small "Trajectory Correction Maneuver" thruster (which was fired only in 2017 and then 1980 before that), Voyager 1 isn't a rocket or have any other military impact. I'd happily argue the Voyager program is one of the greats feats of human achievement in history. It's in interstellar space for crying out loud!

Frankly, why even call yourself a hacker if you're anti-scientific progress and anti-technology?

[0] https://spinoff.nasa.gov/

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#215

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

LiquidSky wrote: post #208

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #190

Leading with "Trump" just makes it political/ideological. People need to stop making "the personality" the center of these discussions, because people who like him will just like whatever he does, and immediately disagree with you. Focus on the issue instead and people have to debate on merits rather than ideology.

He’s the President of the United States and the one (officially) making these decisions. It’d be absurd not to include him in talking about these issues.

[deleted]

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#216

Post by cosmic_cheese » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

palmfacehn wrote: post #134

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sticking point for me is that it’s such a risky bet to assume that something else will fill the gap. Much of the research impacted by cuts is not the type that private industry has typically conducted because it can’t be performed with a specific profitable result in mind. It’s the kind of research that had wound up beneficial in the long run indirectly due to incidental discoveries and unexpected connections. So…

This is a common response here and elsewhere. Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital. This is exactly the attitude I was speaking to in my comment above. It would be rare to find a spending program which the proponents didn't claim was incredibly valuable. Here on HN we have an interest in technology. It fits that we value some of the discoveries of NASA. Down thread, you'll find o…

> Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital

It’s quite likely that many of them are actually vital, with long term costs outstripping short term savings from cuts to an enormous degree. Nobody is doing the math to figure this out, though. The cuts aren’t calculated, but instead wide and largely blind. Some kind of major fallout is unavoidable when operating in such a manner.

In reality the deepest savings to be had are probably in doing things like cracking down on endless chains of government subcontracting, ousting the numerous middlemen pocketing money the whole way, and cutting places where excess clearly leads to little or no return. That’s a lot of work and takes time, effort, and expertise and doesn’t make a voterbase-placating big media splash though, and so there’s no chance of that happening.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#217

Post by rockemsockem » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

sc68cal wrote: post #195

rockemsockem wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that was good because... Why?

[flagged]

NASA still sets requirements and invites several companies to compete for contracts with different solutions. See the lunar lander contracts from a few years ago for example.

You are ascribing beliefs to be based on others in this thread I think.

What I think is that if a company is going to build and provide the solution then they should own the design. NASA should of course get to be involved in reviews and discussions, which they absolutely fucking are, but I do not think that it makes sense for one organization to design something and the other one to build it as if there's like a hard line between these two activities.

I'm not convinced that is how it worked in the days of Apollo either as you've just asserted that without citation.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#218

Post by Ray20 » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #101

Theodores wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the art of the deal with Trump and I would say that he is a narcissist rather than authoritarian. Trump has a massive ego and I would have expected him to want the biggest rockets, and to pain them gold. If he did then I would denounce him for spending money on space when America has trillions of debt. I don't disagree with him on everything he says just because he said it. So, with space, my honest take is tha…

If you read about Maduro wanting to imprison the leader of a region of Venezuela, who belongs to the opposition party, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read that the Secretary of Defense of Turkey declined to commit to obeying court orders, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read about Viktor Orban sending actual troops rather than police to a city because of a flimsy pretext, you'd call it authoritarianism…

I am not an American and may not understand what is going on inside, but from the outside it appears that you are simply engaging in political smears.

Authoritarianism means oppressing the masses, having an undemocratic government and acting against the will of the people. It happens in Venezuela. It happens in Turkey. It happens in Hungary. It doesn't happen in the US.

If anything, what is happening in the US is exactly the opposite: Trump, who won the popular vote, therefore a representative of the oppressed majority, is waging a war against their oppression (as masses seems it) by the authoritarian deep state.

If I go to any American factory right now and ask random blue-collar workers how they feel about, for example, public NASA's commitment to "unity, diversity and inclusion in workforce recruitment, hiring, training and management", what will be their average position on this question?

So if we try to be fair with terms, here it is quite obvious on which side we have an authoritarian institution, whose views are shared only by a narrow group of the elite and those sections of the population that receive money or are otherwise influenced by the authoritarian government, and which side is fighting against those authoritarianism

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#219

Post by mindslight » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #27

rtkwe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they care. Research etc goes against a lot of their ideological stances from climate policy to gender to economics (eg: there's barely a trickle down the cups at the top are bottomless) so they're just destroying the institutions that oppose them so they can make more money and retreat to their redoubts or just be dead by the time the repercussions of things like climate change become unignorable.

Not only do they not care, they actually relish destroying anything they consider to be "woke", like science. It's unfortunate, but modern American conservatism is now defined by hating everything that liberals love. This is a pity, because there should be a balance between "progress" and "government restraint" -- and that is no longer possible.

> modern American conservatism is now defined by hating everything that liberals love

Please stop giving this movement a disguise by continuing to call it conservatism. I know that word has had negative connotations to a large segment of liberals/progressives, but conservatism actually has a bunch of worthwhile values - despite being harmful when taken to the extreme, like everything.

What we're dealing with now is better described as populist reactionary fascism. There is nothing conservative about it beyond that the people supporting it used to align with conservatism but then got really angry because their fundamentalist mantras didn't pan out. The current home of actual conservatism is the Democratic party, who still have values like believing in American institutions and America being a force for good in the world.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#220

Post by martythemaniak » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

xedrac wrote: post #209

davidw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read about Maduro wanting to imprison the leader of a region of Venezuela, who belongs to the opposition party, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read that the Secretary of Defense of Turkey declined to commit to obeying court orders, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read about Viktor Orban sending actual troops rather than police to a city because of a flimsy pretext, you'd call it authoritarianism…

You're ignoring the massive elephant in the room. The previous administration let millions and millions of completely unvetted and undocumented immigrants into our county, creating an unprecedented crisis. I view Trump's actions as reclaiming our country from the brink. All of the instances you mentioned are simply fallout from the crises Trump was handed, and it astonishes me how liberals cannot see this simple fact…

> creating an unprecedented crisis

Nope, that's just your brain on right wing propaganda. Nothing of the sort has happened to justify throwing away the rule of law as this administration is doing. It is like murdering someone because you're annoyed that they chew with their mouth open, just an absolutely, wildly disproportionate response to what has happened. Coincidentally (to riff on the GP) it is almost word-for-word the propaganda Orban used in the mid 2010s to consolidate his authoritarian rule of Hungary.