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Well, NASA is caught in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration's proposed buzzer cuts. Scientists and space advocates scrambling to save the organization from a potential forty seven percent slash in funding, with eighty five percent of staff furlough amid the government shutdown, all while the President considers reviving fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman's nomination to lead NASA.
Joining me now is.
A familiar face fighting against this bill. Nye, the science guy. He is the CEO at the Planetary Society.
Bill.
Fantastic to have you with us. Of course, we had Monday's Day of Action. You played a strong part in organizing that. Tell us about what the reception has been like from the Trump administration from Congress in trying to push back against some of these proposed.
Well, Congress has been great.
So both the Senate and House have pushed back, rejecting virtually all of the proposed cuts. So twenty percent overalled in NASA and forty almost half to NASA Science. And if you cut NASA Science in half, you pretty much end it. So what the expression is extinction? Level for science. And so the reason this matters is every dollar you spend with NASA, it goes into the economy about a factor of three that it it in yours to a benefit about three x of what you put in.
And then the other thing.
Everybody, you guys were talking about China and our relationship to China. The Chinese China National Space Administration rather is doing amazing things. They have some very smart people and they're exploring space for the same reasons we are.
And I predict if nothing is done.
There will be at least two more what I like to call spot Nick moments when the Western world wakes up to, oh, my goodness, this remarkable capability from Asia. And so they're gonna land guys or gals on the Moon in twenty thirty four and a half years from now, and they will almost certainly send spacecraft to Mars to look for geologic samples rocks that may bear signs of ancient life, and they will bring them back around twenty
thirty three. Meanwhile, with the cuts to NASA, none of that would happen here in the States.
I am curious, and I like how you quantify the idea of sort of what the economic impact of NASA is. And I go back to your history, and particularly with some of the things that you've worked on, you were instrumental. I believe in working on some of the sundials that went onto a couple.
Of instrumental See what he did there, instrumental. I got him. It's an instrument But talk a little bit about it, Bill and all.
Seriously, I mean, talk a little bit about why that's important for the average person, because I think the average person looks at this and just thinks, Okay, we're just shooting stuff up into space just for you know, you know, just for giggles.
Oh no, no, no, So everybody, we're having this conversation right now.
Because of so called space assets, we.
Would not be able to predict weather, we would not be able to have situational awareness for the military. We would not have satellite internet service, We wouldn't have any of these things without exploring space. Furthermore, everybody knows the expressions big bang, everybody knows black hole. These are a result of space exploration. And I predict it's not extraordinary. If we were to find evidence of life on another world,
it would change this world. It would change the way each of us feels about being a living thing here in the cosmos, and so Furthermore, the cost of this exploration is very, very small, and compared to everything else the federal everything else in the federal budget the federal government spends money on. And then remind you, guys, other countries, other space programs are going full on organized efforts to do almost mission for mission right what the United States is planning to cut.
It's really a remarkable time.
But as I say, both the Senate and House have rejected the cuts. What we want them to do is that business of reconciliation and then get this, as they say, over the finish line, this legislation.
Well, Bill, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the idea that you could see private companies step in to fill the void that could be left behind if NASA is cut in half. I see you shaking your head.
I'm going to give them mike to you. Oh yeah, yeah. It's two different things.
Sending rockets to low Earth orbit or even ferrying spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits and so on is one thing. There is no business case. Nobody's making money looking for evidence of life on Mars. This is a replica of the Mars sample tubes. These are rock samples that are on Mars. Some of them are in the belly of the rover Perseverance. Some of them are deliberately left on the surface where we could pick them up in case something goes wrong.
There's no plan to bring those back. What's in those rocks, these so called leopard spots, may be evidence of ancient life which.
Would have started on Mars. That would be extraordinary.
All right, then, everybody, you may have heard the expression dark energy, dark matter. Nobody is quite sure what causes the galaxies to move the way they do.
There is nobody making money.
Nobody's cashing in on looking for where this dark matter, this gravity comes from. There's no business case to look for evidence of life on the ocean of Europa twice as much seawater as Earth, and a moon of Jupiter.
Yet these discoveries can change the world. Do you think they'll?
Bill and I know that the US has kind of been at the center of the space exploration for decades.
Now, is it possible US invented it?
We did, But is it possible now that we're going to see another country, whether it be China, India or someone else pick up that mantle and can that be beneficial still for the US or not.
Well, I don't think it's what people want. I don't think most people in the United States, most US citizens, would be joyful that another space organization was able to put people on the Moon again without the US having a presence, or to put people to send spacecraft or other missions to these more distant destinations Jupiter, Mars, Europa, Titan, Moon of Saturn. Also, you guys, the plan now is just turn these spacecraft off.
Just turn them off. I mean, we have spent at least.
Twelve billion dollars on the spacecraft which you're flying right now, and in the case of Mars, we've spent about twenty three billion to find this place, to look for these rocks to bring them back.
Talk about a waste of money. Yeah, just turning them off extraordinary.
The idea is it's hard to imagine really at first, and that's why the Senate and the House have rejected these cuts and pushed back. As far as whose idea it was in the first place to cut NASSA in half, I'm not sure, because understand, the first Trump administration was all in on space.
Yeah, they were.
They created a massa budget going full on. Yeah, and something's happened second time around.
Well, it'll be interesting to see. We have to get you back on because there is a bill on now trying to work its way through the committee that maybe could reinstate SELMA of that funding out all of it.
Bill really appreciated.
Bill Nye, of course, is the CEO at the Planetary Society, and of course many of us, of course very endearingly know him from his previous show Bill Nye as the science guy