The new president-elect also has plans to abandon climate research, transfer Earth monitoring funding from NASA to NOAA, and strengthen the U.S. military’s stance in orbit.
I got excited for a second, but nevermind. This is fucking disgusting. Space exploration is a mission of peace and scientific advancement. Stop militarizing space, you bastard! Even the Cold War didn't manage that!
The amazing thing is that's not the worst part of what you just quoted. That earth monitoring stuff NASA is doing is, besides what it's does to help climate research, also just about the only thing that
lets them do anything orbital or extra orbital.
You see, for those out there that don't know, there's this thing called "launch window". Finding and utilizing them requires, among other things, the sort of data that, well. Is also useful for climate change research. No earth monitoring? No space flight, because everything that tries to get out goes off course and/or ignites and/or misses what it was aiming for. Turns out hurling giant piles of mass into space is a somewhat delicate process that things like wind and rain can cause trouble for :V
I guess theoretically NOAA could do the same thing, but then... all you'd be doing is transferring the funding to another organization that's not currently set up for it to do the exact same thing, one that isn't as specialized or attentive (because they've got other things to do) to the needs of space flight.
... though if he manages to go through with it, I guess that
could mean we're going to get more data on what happens to a launch that goes up through a thunderstorm. Which might do something for orbital launch engineering and whatnot? May they all be unmanned
OTOH, I do now have an image of the funding and duty getting transferred to NOAA, and them immediately turning around and contracting it out to NASA, because they're the ones with the infrastructure, experience, and expertise to do the job appropriately. That would be kinda' hilarious.