Trump wants NASA out of space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025, and private businesses running the place instead.
Under U. S. President Donald Trump’s 2019 proposed budget released Monday, U. S. government funding for the space station would end by 2025. The government would set aside $ 150 million to encourage commercial development.
Many space experts are expressing concern. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who rocketed into orbit in 1986, said “turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space” makes no sense.
Retired NASA historian and Smithsonian curator Roger Launius notes that any such move will affect all the other countries involved in the space station; Russia is a major player, as is Europe, Japan and Canada. “I suspect this will be a major aspect of any decisions about ISS’ future,” Launius wrote in an email.
NASA has spent close to $ 100 billion on the orbiting outpost since the 1990s. The first piece was launched in 1998, and the complex was essentially completed with the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2011.
Private businesses already have a hand in the project. The end of the shuttle program prompted NASA to turn over supply runs to the commercial sector. SpaceX and Orbital ATK have been making deliveries since 2012, and Sierra Nevada Corp. will begin making shipments with its crewless mini shuttles in a few years.
SpaceX and Boeing, meanwhile, are developing crew capsules to fly astronauts to and from the space station within the next year. These commercial flights will represent the first astronaut launches from U. S. soil since NASA’s shuttles stopped flying.
Altogether, the administration’s proposed budget, along with an addendum, seeks to increase NASA’s budget slightly to $ 19.9 billion.
About $ 10 billion is targeted for human space exploration and to “pursue a campaign that would establish U. S. preeminence to, and around, and on the moon,” according to the proposal.
While the budget plan said it places renewed support on returning humans to the moon, followed by human expeditions to Mars and elsewhere, few details are provided.