NASA’s new acting boss, Sean Duffy, yet another Trump administration official who was ripped straight from TV and put in charge of a major government agency, is less a rocket scientist and more Fox News panelist who got the job because he was on TV a lot.
In office for barely a month, the former congressman, reality TV star, and current Secretary of Transportation is dismantling NASA bit by bit, and not in the way engineers would recommend.
Duffy wants NASA to forget about Earth and start packing for the Moon. Specifically, he’s pushing for a lunar base with a nuclear reactor. Why? That’s anyone’s guess. China says they’re going to do it, so maybe that’s all the motivation he needs?
Don’t know what the rush is or why that’s needed, but that’s the world we live in now. People are using their tremendous power to do things that don’t seem reasonable or necessary.
In a recent 11-minute infomercial disguised as a Fox Business interview, Duffy made it crystal clear: NASA’s new direction is exploration-only. Studying Earth is for losers who don’t want beachfront property in Kansas by 2080.
While some might get a thrill from the renewed Moon hype, likely the subset also fantasizing about making cryptocurrency the moon’s official form of money, China seems poised to beat the U.S. back there. Which brings up the question of whether or not it’d even be worth it, considering the cost: Earth science is on the chopping block.
Using NASA’s incredible technology and brainpower, scientists study the Earth itself to better understand our home and the dangers, as well as the immediate and long-term effects, of climate change. Earth science represents about 10 percent of NASA’s budget, and eliminating it might be illegal. As Ars Technica points out, NASA’s founding legislation literally mandates studying the atmosphere and space.
It’s an odd cut to make considering that, according to polls of the American people, the two things Americans want NASA to do above all are 1) protect us from asteroids, and 2) monitor climate change.
It all seems like yet another instance where the Trump administration’s goals and priorities are entirely misaligned with the rest of the nation’s.