Skinny cows and skinny budgets

“Next, seven skinny, bony cows came up out of the river. I have never seen such terrible looking cows anywhere in Egypt. The skinny cows ate the fat ones. But you couldn’t tell it, because these skinny cows were just as skinny as they were before. At once, I woke up.” –Genesis 41: 19-21

On May 2, 2025, the White House published its budget request for next year, requesting 24.3% less for NASA than this year. The entire federal budget request for non-defense discretionary spending was 23% less. And here I am, thinking NASA was special.

This “skinny budget,” as the administration called it, would increase the Human Space Exploration budget while it “phases out” the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion, and the lunar Gateway. The net increase here comes from cuts elsewhere. The request also includes reducing the crew size and onboard research for the International Space Station, reflecting the upcoming transition to commercial approaches.

Most of the overall NASA cut is in NASA science, specifically any spacecraft looking at Earth, and from drastically reducing mission support, aeronautics, and basic space technology research. The puts and takes present significant questions, but these would be noticed only by gluttons for punishment, like me. (The discussion would be eye-watering. Commercial LEO must get a boost, reflecting a faster transition to private stations. Right? As program cancellations are not immediate but will soon follow, there must be a boost to work now toward what comes next. Right? We have reason to believe many qualified support contractors will appear, offering to work for much less while providing the same or better service. Right? /s)

Yet the devil is not, practically speaking, in the details, as much as I would enjoy a wonkish dive into all of this. Delving into the nitty-gritty implies that all we have here is more of the usual exercise. Dust off the model. Step back. Take the numbers, marry them to the marching orders. Add some meat to the bones of the skinny cows along the way. Analyze variants, this option or that, to provide tactical alternatives for decision-makers. Dream on.

Instead, as surprising as it may sound, what I see is a budget continuing a handful of powerful, long-lived trends and tendencies for NASA, none of which are good or sustainable. Seeing this requires only one teaspoon of math and a few pieces of history.

1.0 This frog has been boiling for a while now.

NASA’s budget has never kept up with published inflation. This means, effectively, that NASA has typically had its budget cut, year after year, for a very long time. Since 1995, NASA has lost 21% of its purchasing power, adjusted for inflation. This frog has been boiling for a while now.

 Worse, NASA’s inflation indexes likely underestimate how much more expensive the stuff of space costs every year. Just as the consumer inflation index can be far removed from daily life and expenses, NASA’s inflation indexes are far removed from spacesuits and spaceships. That’s not counting the cost of science, research, and space technology that no one has yet dreamt of. Space is not jet engines plus tweaks.

So, NASA has already lost a fifth of its budget, slowly but surely, over thirty years. If this sounds bad, the reality is likely far worse.

2.0 Increasing ambition means NASA always tries to fit another pound in a shrinking bag.

NASA projects must be increasingly ambitious. Congress may be dedicated to allocating funds in specific districts, but a justification must follow. It is not enough to keep up with inflation. That would mean a new project that does the same thing that has already been done. The ground beef costs the same as last year for the same pound. Rather, to survive, to be sold, and to be sponsored, NASA projects promise more next year than the last. Optimism is what really fuels NASA’s spaceships.

Also, as happens across all fields, after the low-hanging fruit is picked, the ones after are more difficult to reach. Breakthroughs will happen. But in the meantime, efforts must increase to get the same effect as before.

If the Voyager spacecraft flew quickly by Jupiter in 1979, Galileo in 1997 would settle into a Jupiter orbit. If the Hubble Space Telescope awed us with its pictures, Webb would see objects a hundred times dimmer. And if we once orbited Earth in Space Shuttles five or so times a year for a couple of weeks, now we would go further. We would stay in space, permanently, on a station. We would go back to the Moon, then on to Mars.

Once you are accustomed to squeezing five pounds into a four-pound bag, it becomes a habit to always try to squeeze in more.

3.0 Flags and Footprints were always trending, but now we are set to double down.

The White House 2026 budget request for NASA accelerates another long-established NASA trend. The tension between advocates of NASA R&D and science vs. human spaceflight missions dates back decades. After the loss of Columbia, with the end of the Shuttle program an inevitability, this Cold War turned hot. “Mission” advocates propose a singular task to focus the mind—and the bureaucracy. Raids on NASA R&D and Science in favor of the Human Spaceflight budget have occurred before, if mostly unsuccessful.

Mission advocates believe the benefit NASA provides is in the visual of simple achievements, like astronauts stepping onto the Moon. This goal is equated to a plan (the usual confusion of “what” with “how.”) The rest, research, science, and technology, are seen as -yawn- difficult to explain. In either case, these are too far off to be of use when justifying resources. To defend NASA’s funding in Congress or the White House, flags and footprints will do the job.

NASA’s first lunar program, Constellation, ran with this idea. Its downfall was, in good part, the sense its hyper-focus would repeat the Apollo program. As with Apollo, the Constellation program’s emphasis on getting to the Moon, not on what comes after, was judged a formula for failure. Not considering whether the goal was even likely to be achieved at all for various reasons, the strawman criticism accepted the return to the Moon as achievable but short-sighted.

Amazingly, from the ashes of Constellation, most of the parts and pieces continued as if they had merely hit a speed bump. The defense was these parts would be needed one day when Congress and the White House provide further clarity. NASA joined these old parts (mostly SLS and Orion) under the banner of a new Moon-to-Mars architecture and a new Artemis program. Smarter now, this lunar variant said the plan is to return to the Moon “this time, to stay.”

Once again, though, thanks to increasing costs (Return to Line 1) the latest Moon program is delayed. What was to be the 2024 return to the Moon looks like 2028, but only if endless problems go away on schedule, unlike everything else.

Pressing fast-forward to the recent budget request, we see an emphasis on Human Spaceflight at the expense of science and R&D. For now, it would seem the advocates of a mission-focused NASA are doubling down on the flags and footprints. Reasons come right along, how this time will be different. Two reasons in particular.

NASA’s “commercial space” efforts will save the day?

The newer retort to the usual damning budgetary math, NASA always asked to do more for less, is to point out that NASA has shown it can. Drastically. In effect, NASA can cause aerospace deflation. You can get more next year for much less money than last year. In partnership with SpaceX (mainly), as well as Boeing and Northrop, the commercial cargo and crew programs demonstrated how space goods as a service could break away from the grossly unaffordable costs that would otherwise have been predicted.

The current budget request asks NASA to do more “commercial” space. Unfortunately, these projects and others like them remain exceptions among all the NASA dollars spent annually.

Worse, NASA has already been increasing its commercial holdings, only to discover strange new problems. Phil McAlister, the recently retired long-time NASA commercial space chief,  said recently, “There is a fundamental incompatibility of achieving the benefits of a “commercial-oriented approach” and maintaining tight control over programmatic decisions.” (I published a journal paper on this problem along similar lines.)

We have seen what happens when more of a good thing becomes a trend. Following Goodhart’s law, NASA is turning commercial space into a target. And as the adage goes, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Tasked with repeating a prior success, NASA appears to increasingly favor the branding of “commercial” laid atop its old ways.

Deus ex-Machina, lower the Starship.

Within the prior commercial emphasis, reading between the lines suggests that a SpaceX Starship will save the day. This story so far reveals characters with increasing expenses but declining income. Still, one of the main characters is ambitious, always reaching further. They defend a moment of glorious achievement, in a heated scene with everyone arguing over the best path given the limited circumstances.

But, like a Greek tragedy, we tie up the numerous loose ends simply. The finale pulls a Deus ex-Machina. Lower Starship onto the stage. Even so, many bothersome details remain.

The Starship has no escape system for one. This is easily solved with a crew transfer from a SpaceX Dragon or a Boeing Starliner after the Starship is fueled up in Earth’s orbit.

But, while a Starship landing on the Moon can take off again, it can’t leave lunar orbit. Not enough fuel. So perhaps there is another Dragon in lunar orbit, an upgraded one to get that far. Then, the crew transfers to a Dragon+ (again) for a ride home.

Except now the Starship is expendable. Throwing away massive, custom NASA Starship lunar landers is not a formula for a sustainable, affordable, and permanent lunar presence. But other landers will come into the picture, or perhaps the ship could be refueled in lunar orbit, and so on.

None of this is unsurmountable, except the devil is not in the technical details, and he never was.

“Plans are nothing, planning is everything.”

Throughout all this, NASA has maintained another trend: an aversion to planning. A previous NASA associate administrator once said, “We don’t have what really would be a valid strategy that the common man would accept.” A recent independent review said, “The committee heard repeatedly from NASA leaders at many levels that they felt there was little point to internal strategic planning...” The plan, if there is one, is to embrace the helplessness.

The lack of planning linked to what comes after the flags and footprints would seem practical. First things first. Then, effort will be diverted to everything that comes after, to the “to stay” part. Like the business plan that starts with a miracle and ends up in a rigorous, heated debate about market share, discussions around the recent budget request run the risk of getting distracted. It’s the miracle that needs attention.

This will all sound familiar. NASA has had so many plans. But that is very different from planning. As President Eisenhower said, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” Moving forward, flexibility must be about learning, adapting, and changing as events evolve rather than a means to avoid measuring progress toward a goal. An aversion to planning can easily become an aversion to adding things up to see if your steps today align with the goal you want to achieve tomorrow. Steps like more commercial space, or Starships, or steps “to stay” on the Moon. Though, again, a continued lack of planning would continue the prior trend.

Now is a good time to remember the plot.

There are goals, and there are resources. Six pounds in a five-pound bag will hold for a while with care and not much jostling. Years later, you try and get seven pounds in your bag. Ambition, optimism. No one is in NASA because they are pessimists. Except now, thanks to the magic of slowly losing purchasing power, you find yourself with only a four-pound bag.

While holding on to the cliffside by its fingernails, NASA found a toehold: a race to the Moon. Also, learning from critiques, NASA brands its effort as more than just a one-time deal. More than mere footprints on regolith. But, as time has revealed, adding substance to the branding is challenging. Remember the ever-diminishing dollars, the ever increasing promises.

Predictably, to appear to add up nonetheless and even to appear to have a plan, we are told NASA will now discard its distractions. More focus than ever. Less to fit in that shrinking bag. Toss aside plenty of overhead, the climate this, the R&D that. Commercial space and a Starship will save the day. In the vein of a SpaceX that just does things, with no care for a plan, NASA will just go do it.

The plot we lost in all this is about the benefits of space for people on Earth, beginning with new medicines and materials. Having learned to live and work in space on the ISS, the details include remembering what made commercial space work in programs that gave rise to the groundbreaking Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft. Extending this success, we are within reach of a new orbital economy beyond communications and imaging. This economy will include people, goods, and services flowing back and forth freely between innovative, productive space stations and Earth. NASA crews and private citizens will work side by side on groundbreaking R&D. The goal is to create products that benefit everyone on Earth, products that will say, “Made in Space.”

Any path to the Moon starts on Earth, runs through low Earth orbit, and continues through cis-lunar space. It is not a leap of reason to say that a vibrant low-Earth orbit economic, political, and technological infrastructure is required to enable a permanent and growing human presence on the Moon. NASA has tried the shortcuts for twenty years and going. These shortcuts will prove unsustainable at best, or worse, doomed to fail and never even get to the part about flags. Such a strategy would require a plan and planning to link what is seemingly unconnected – LEO, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

US infrastructure excels in and enables the mass production of innovation.

Many people, including myself, would enjoy exploring this or that space architecture, playing with Starships, spacecraft, and spacesuits, like LEGO pieces scattered on the floor. Before that can have any relevance, so much more is required: constant planning, meaning adjusting course as soon as indicated, constantly aligning costs and budget outlooks with goals, and getting commercial programs back to their original form and function. Most broadly, a strategy of LEO to the Moon to Mars and beyond reasonably ties up the loose ends.

US infrastructure excels in and enables the mass production of innovation. This strength can move out into space. The skinny budgets will, with planning, one day be followed by fat ones. That Pharaoh of old had no aversion to planning and saved the day. Now, if only NASA, Congress, the White House, and a soon-to-arrive new NASA administrator would remember this–and the plot.