Anger & sorrow ...

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean during the second moonwalk.
NASA/Recall Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo

Complex tech takes years to develop beginning with base research and leveraging it to create tech able to change the world. From quantum mechanics leading to the creation of the computer to the invention of software to build AI, complex systems are fragile beasts requiring patience, intelligence and vision in order for said system to thrive. The somber take by Scientific American regarding proposed cuts to NASA by the administration from hell is spot on because once you gut a complex system, it takes years, if even possible, to resurrect the system. Anger and sorrow on this potential dismantling of something wonderful and far reaching breaks my heart without question.

For more than half a century planetary exploration and space science have been a hallmark of American achievement and excellence. From Mercury to Pluto and beyond, we have gained enormous understanding about planetary origins and evolution. We have learned about the atmospheric, surface and interior dynamics of other worlds. All those discoveries have carried implications for what’s happening here on Earth. In classrooms around the world, exploring new worlds and probing the mysteries of the universe is an emblem of America.

But that may now end; the Trump administration is poised to take the chainsaw to space science, just as it has to almost everything else in the U.S. science portfolio. Trump officials are planning huge, destructive cuts for space science, according to news reports, likely killing all new mission plans for this decade, including the long-sought, all-important Mars Sample Return mission. This flight was meant to return now-waiting samples from the red planet.

China is already leading the way to the moon and Mars with robotic vehiclelike rovers and sample returns and is also likely to do so with human missions. The U.S. human space program, meanwhile, is bogged down with a stumbling Artemis program, built with a convoluted architecture marked so far by failures and delays in nearly every major component. The latest is the repeated failure of SpaceX’s Starship, which twice now has exploded in flight. Reminiscent of the 1980s, when we paused planetary exploration after the success of Viking and launch of Voyager 1 and 2, the U.S. has iced new Mars missions, with plans to cancel Mars Sample Return, and redirected our once great lunar capability to small experimental landers built by inexperienced new companies. Beyond specific missions, the loss of space science research capability will be a generational calamity.

Truer words never spoken.

We were there ... back in the day ...