Thread by @BadAstronomer

So. Time for a rant.

The subject: Trump’s 2020 budget proposal. It’s a disaster. A huge, horrible, “screw you” to America.

1/n

2/n The NASA side of it is a ridiculous mess, canceling several important missions and cutting funding for many others. I wrote all about that in today’s blog post. syfy.com/syfywire/trump…

3/n I can’t get past how early the blatant lies start. *BEFORE EVEN THE FIRST PROPER PAGE*. On the title page is this little slogan: “Promises kept. Taxpayers first.” Holy crap.

4/n I mean seriously, holy crap. This budget cuts over a *trillion* dollars from Medicare and Medicare. In his campaign Trump promised not to cut those. He also said Mexico will pay for the wall, but the budget wants $8.6 BILLION for it. From the American taxpayers.

5/n So both lines in that slogan are lies. Right up front.

6/n As far as NASA goes, this budget cancels WFIRST a big orbiting observatory that is a high priority to astronomers. It also zeroes out funding for NASA education, and for two important climate monitoring satellites. Because of course.

7/n But here’s where things get truly whacky. Weirdly, it takes money away from SLS, the giant rocket NASA’s building. I’m actually not a fan of this rocket. To say the least. However, the money is not gone, it’s refocused to get NASA past delays in getting the first stage built.

8/n SLS was designed to do a handful of very big missions, most importantly to put an Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon. The budget cancels all the other things, leaving *only* the ability to launch Orion. Got that? Because this next one is truly a brain-buster.

9/n Today in front of Congress NASA Admin @JimBridenstine said we can launch an (uncrewed) Orion crew capsule ON A COMMERCIAL ROCKET FIRST in 2020 and *then* use SLS for the 2nd mission later when the rocket is ready. Whaaaaat?

@SciGuySpace has details: arstechnica.com/science/2019/0…

@JimBridenstine @SciGuySpace 10/n If this is the case, I’m even less convinced than before that we need SLS *at all*.

This announcement is a very big deal. Very big.

11/n SLS is a do-it-all-at-once rocket, capable of launching everything in one throw. What Bridenstine is saying is that we can do it in pieces, dock in Earth orbit, and move on to the Moon from there. If that’s the case, there is no need for SLS anywhere in this equation.

12/n Congress, specifically the Senate, loves SLS, so this announcement is going to drop like a bomb in some Senators’ offices, like Richard Shelby, a massive proponent of SLS.

13/n I don’t know how this will play out, and it’s hard to imagine SLS being canceled at this point, but if we can use Delta IV and Falcon Heavy to do everything we need, then maybe NASA can actually move past these endless SLS delays and get back to the Moon.

14/n We have the rockets to do this *right now*. We just need a realistic mission plan from NASA on how to do it. That could take a while, but it’s something that can actually move forward instead of being mired in endless delays.

15/n The next few days/months will be very interesting indeed for NASA. About Trump’s miserable budget, I’m hopeful Congress will reinstate funding for the stuff Trump wants canceled.

16/16 As for the Moon, well, we’ll see. For the first time in a long time I can actually see us going back soon. /fin

P.S. Again, here’s my blog post that went up *before* NASA Admin. Bridenstine went before Congress. I may update it with all this new info, because holy wow.

syfy.com/syfywire/trump…