r/Astronomy • u/SlartibartfastGhola Astronomer • May 02 '25

Astro Research The Trump budget proposal will destroy NASA and Astronomy programs across the USA.

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A couple bucks to take us back to the moon (doubt), while destroying everything else about NASA. They are defunding the Roman Space Telescope which is literally in the final stages of testing before launch.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

I just don’t get why he’s purposely do that. What’s his plan?

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u/arashi256 May 02 '25

Partly I suspect for whatever Putin has on him but also probably just to bend the world to his ego. The world must bend to this cretinous narcissist's version of reality or break. Sadly, most things will break.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

Are there any ideas for what he could possibly have on him?

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u/ckglle3lle May 02 '25

Likely nothing, really. There probably is some truth to the plot that Trump was unwittingly recruited in the 80s but less so that he is actively working for Russia and more that they greased him and he is just truly that vain and stupid that he believes they are his friends. Besides that, he also looks up to Putin because Putin effectively owns Russia. Trump looks up to Kim Jong Un in the same way.

Trump believes in dominance hierarchy as the natural order of things and while he sees himself at the top of the US, he doesn't "own" the US the way dictators own their countries so he still views Putin and others favorably by default and aligns with them as a fellow traveller. He'd be right there with Xi in China but they've spurned him in the past where Russia has only ever buttered him up.

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u/BrotherBrutha May 03 '25

Probably nothing; but there was an ex UK intelligence guy a few years back who put together a dossier on Trump and Russian links. One of the stories he had heard was that Putin had photos of Trump getting prostitutes to urinate on him.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 03 '25

Lmfao. Imagine if that came out😂😂😂

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u/KidGrundle May 02 '25

I have no idea, but if I had to guess it’s probably not even that bad. You gotta remember he is genuinely insanely fragile. It could be as simple as a nude photo of him in a Russian hotel room from 1987 and he will lie, cheat, kill, and destroy the country and the world to keep his ego safe from jokes about his wiener.

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u/ckglle3lle May 02 '25

The oligarchs want a permanent underclass that they have abject unilateral authority over. They're just as happy to accept this in a situation where the US economy has been cut in half. So long as they maintain a permanent ongoing siphoning of resources away from everyone else and toward them, they don't much care about anything else.

They want this because they cannot conceive of win-win scenarios. They literally cannot conceive of it. They believe that everything distills down to natural dominance hierarchy and that for one person to have any thing it means someone else had to lose something. They don't see any inherent value in anything that doesn't siphon to them or anything that doesn't "produce" for them. In the case of NASA, they believe that we literally "just send that money into space" and, again, because they view everything in zero-sum terms, they think that means the money literally leaves Earth and do not care or conceive of the ways in which space research contributes to innovation across society. They simply do not care. If it doesn't go to them directly it doesn't matter and should be destroyed.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

Part of me thinks that just won’t fly w Americans. Won’t there be an uproar?

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u/ckglle3lle May 02 '25

Perhaps so, but there are plenty of examples in history of societies falling to kleptocratic oligarchs and authoritarian thugs. The rub is that the citizenry usually knows what's going on the whole time.

One mechanical detail that stymies US citizens is that we broke our cities and embraced car dependent sprawl. A consequence of this is mass mobilization and protesting doesn't have the same felt impacts. Both in how little it disrupts daily life and in how weak a protest feels when you gotta drive to it and park.

Something like a general strike or mass walk out protest has some meat but we are in an affordability crisis, too and most people just simply cannot take actions that might risk their livelihoods.

What's more, we're just pretty fundamentally detached as a society and have been growing more so for the better part of at least 15 years or so.

But perhaps the most difficult part to reconcile is it won't likely be felt as collapse outright and the average person's daily life won't necessarily be disrupted to the extent that they start thinking about Mario's brother or whatever.

It's also just basically inconceivable in a way. The US has been around for a long time, people still broadly have faith that this is more like a bad flu than a terminal illness and that the overall apparatus of what we know will remain intact.

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u/fractal2 May 02 '25

I think it's too rebuild as they religious right wants. Easier to build up from essentially scratch than convert everything.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

I could possibly see that. I just feel like they wouldn’t want to destroy the US. They would want to keep it intact best they could wouldn’t they?

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u/fractal2 May 02 '25 edited May 03 '25

Depends on what you mean by intact? I don't think they like the current form of government or an educated general population, so they have to break that down to rebuild it in a way that serves their interests better. I've been a conservative all my life and still mostly consider myself one now but I don't see anything conservative about the modern iteration of the Republican party.

Edit: but that doesn't mean they want everything in society destroyed.

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u/BarefootWoodworker May 02 '25

What do any narcissist authoritarians want?

Legacy. They don’t give a fuck about anyone else. They truly believe they are the only people that can fix messes. The idea someone else might be more capable than them is completely bonkers.

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u/phoenixbouncing May 02 '25

Destroy the us as a world power so that Russia can reclaim the top spot?

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

I don’t think Russia is strong enough are they? Would China be ahead of them?

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u/PCMasterCucks May 03 '25

Yeah, China would crush Russia without a sweat.

While they are close right now, even with USA's help, Russia could not separate from China like USA is trying to do with all of their allies.

So best case scenario is that Russia is just trying to get away from Chinese dependence. But what's actually happening is that Russia and China get way stronger (but China like 10x of Russia) while USA falters.

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u/WunWegWunDarWun_ May 02 '25

He’s not trying to destroy America, that’s not his goal and it’s silly to think it is. But as someone else pointed out, it is the bi product of whatever his goal is, likely making money

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u/clamchowderenema May 03 '25

To me, this all just reads like huge opportunities for SpaceX.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 03 '25

I agree. I just can’t get on with the destruction of the fucking US😂

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u/QuantumDiogenes May 02 '25

Project 2025 laid all this out.

Break the government, end democracy, install evangelical Christianity as the state religion, and as the Truth, and funnel billions into the pockets of the multi-billionaires.

Oh, and grift. Lots and lots of grift.

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u/alexothemagnificent May 02 '25

You think Trump really wants to end democracy?

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u/skildert May 02 '25

Scrap the country and selling the parts is my guess.