{"id":26939,"date":"2025-05-08T14:39:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=26939"},"modified":"2025-05-08T14:39:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:39:21","slug":"trump-offers-elon-musk-1000000000-gift-amid-largest-cut-to-nasas-budget-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=26939","title":{"rendered":"Trump offers Elon Musk $1,000,000,000 gift amid ‘largest cut to NASA’s budget in history’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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US President Donald Trump’s latest government action involves a handy $1,000,000,000 boost towards Elon Musk’s dream, as the new Fiscal Year 2026 budget has enacted the largest NASA budget cut in history.<\/p>\n

There has been a somewhat thorny relationship between\u00a0President Trump<\/a>\u00a0and the government’s space agency since he began his second term, particularly\u00a0surrounding the return of ‘stranded’ astronauts<\/a>\u00a0Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore after\u00a0SpaceX<\/a>\u00a0CEO\u00a0Elon Musk<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0ordered to ‘go get’ them<\/a>\u00a0both.<\/p>\n

Trump even\u00a0offered to pay the pair’s overtime<\/a>\u00a0after learning the small amount that they’d be getting directly from\u00a0NASA<\/a>, although the latest\u00a0budget<\/a>\u00a0indicates that he isn’t offering that same generosity to the rest of the\u00a0space<\/a>\u00a0agency.<\/p>\n

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Trump’s latest budget has proposed a 24% cut to NASA’s spending, which is the largest in history for the space agency (Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

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Experts have already warned of the\u00a0‘disastrous impact’ that Trump’s tariffs<\/a>\u00a0would have on the space industry as a whole, but NASA are already feeling the effects following what could be its biggest single-year budget cut in history.<\/p>\n

As reported by the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/a>, the government’s new Fiscal Year 2026 budget has revealed that $6 billion has been slashed from NASA’s budget, highlighting what the Trump administration outlines to be ‘unaffordable missions’ and ‘grossly overbudgeted’ research.<\/p>\n

In particular, these cuts affect missions such as the\u00a0Mars<\/a>\u00a0Sample Return – which aims to collect aspects of the red planet to study – the\u00a0International Space Station<\/a>, and also NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The reason behind many of these cuts appears to come down to ‘overspending’ and ‘inefficiencies’, with the Mars Sample Return’s budget rising from initial projections of $3 billion to $11 billion, for example.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the Space Launch System has been branded as ‘grossly expensive and delayed’, and it doesn’t exactly look great when placed next to the comparatively\u00a0cheap cost of SpaceX’s rocket launches<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While NASA as a whole will certainly suffer if this budget is approved, Elon Musk could definitely benefit as the budget cuts have afforded a reallocation of $1 billion towards the\u00a0goal of getting astronauts on Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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NASA’s budget allocation towards Mars exploration could help Musk achieve a long-term goal (Peter Parks\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

Reaching (and eventually colonizing) Mars has\u00a0been a long-term goal<\/a>\u00a0for Musk and SpaceX, and was even\u00a0highlighted by Trump during his inauguration<\/a>, and this new budget appears to put efforts towards continued space travel in motion.<\/p>\n

NASA already have\u00a0plans to allow humans to visit Mars<\/a>, although these appear to currently be unsustainable due to the\u00a0length of time it would take<\/a>\u00a0to reach the planet, but the budget could allow this hurdle to be removed – especially as it has been revealed that money and regulation is the key reason why astronauts have not returned to the Moon in over half a century.<\/p>\n

This change understandably hasn’t been without significant pushback from the space community though, as a\u00a0new statement<\/a>\u00a0from The Planetary Society condemns the cuts, branding them ‘deep’ and ‘damaging’.<\/p>\n

“The proposed cut would represent a historic step backward for American leadership in space science, exploration, and innovation,” the statement reads, adding that “slashing NASA’s budget by this much, this quickly, without the input of a confirmed NASA Administrator or in response to a considered policy goal, won’t make the agency more efficient – it will cause chaos, waste the taxpayers’ investment, and undermine American leadership in space.”<\/p>\n

With Elon Musk revealing his\u00a0own plans for politics on Mars<\/a>\u00a0though, it’s hard to not see this budget pushed through as a means to beat\u00a0China<\/a>\u00a0in the new space race by any means possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    US President Donald Trump’s latest government action involves a handy $1,000,000,000 boost towards Elon Musk’s dream, as the new Fiscal Year 2026 budget has enacted the largest NASA … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26941,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26939\/revisions\/26941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}