The international space station serves as a scientific orbit laboratory where astronauts conduct experiences. The Trump administration proposed to reduce its budget by around $ 500 million and reduce research at the outpost.
AP press service / Roscosmos Space Agency
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AP press service / Roscosmos Space Agency
When Casey Dreier saw the budget proposed by President Trump for NASA, he could not believe the figures.
“It is the worst budget of NASA that I saw in my life,” explains Dreier, head of the space policy of the Planetary Society, a non -profit organization that recommends space exploration.
The budget offers deep cuts for the direction of the scientific mission of NASA, which supervises everything, telescopes which look deep in space with robotic probes exploring planets like Mars. Many of these projects cost billions of dollars to build and launch, but the budget cuts are so deep “that it will force NASA to deactivate the active spacecrafts that produce good science for the money on the dollar for what the American taxpayer paid for them,” said Dreier.
It is not only a spacecraft – the budget proposed by Trump for the federal government would exhaust huge bands from the American scientific company. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would be reduced in two. The National Institutes of Health would lose $ 17 billion in funding. Other agencies such as the Department of Energy, the US Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would all see deep cuts totaling billions of dollars.
These proposals “would be catastrophic if they were implemented”, explains Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. If the republican controlled congress follows the Trump budget plan, warns Parikh, it will reduce science to each university and laboratory in the United States.
“It is a hollow of science across the country, not only in places where I know the administration sometimes likes to make distinctions, but throughout the country,” he said.
Aurora Australis shines near the atmospheric research observatory of the South Pole in Antarctica. The laboratory is managed by the staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in collaboration with the National Science Foundation. The two agencies are faced with deep searches for research.
Patrick Cullis / AP / Noaa
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Patrick Cullis / AP / Noaa
Long -term losses
So far, a large part of Trump’s economic policy has been on prices. The president said they could increase the prices of certain articles, causing short -term pain.
But some economists warn that its lamentable budget for research, unveiled last week as part of a broader plan, also includes long -term risks.
Indeed, fundamental science underpins the economic growth of America, according to Andrew Fieldhouse, economist at Texas A & M University which studies the effect of R&D on the economy.
“In dollars, economic yields are really very high,” he said. Since the Second World War, “R&D government’s investment has regularly have been driving around 20 to 25% of all the growth in American productivity in the private sector”.
Consider the NSF 8107494 subsidy. He was given to a scientist named John J. Hopfield in 1981 for the theoretical study of molecules and biological processes. The subsidy was worth a little less than $ 300,000 at the time (a hair under a million dollars today), and it financed Hopfield’s work on a dark subject: artificial neural networks. This science now underpins the AI ​​revolution of several billion dollars fueling the technological economy. He also won Hopfield a Nobel Prize in physics last year.
Some economists think that the private sector could have done the same thing. Richard Stern, who directs economic policy at the Conservative Heritage Foundation, believes that industry should finance most of the fundamental research in the United States.
“I think that removes the federal money – make these laboratories sing to their supper and get money from private entities that want to look for things that are practical for people – I think it’s the best way to stimulate growth,” he said.
However, even Stern says that these scientific research cuts would not be a priority for him.
“If I ordered public spending to get rid, it would not be at the top of the list,” he said.
And many other economists say that industry can never replace the government as a fundamental research donor.
“Very often, the private sector ends up underinvesting in these fundamental fundamental research areas,” said Vasudeva Ramaswamy, economist at American University.
The knowledge generated is too general and the economic gain too far away, he says.
The cuts proposed by the president are only proposals. It is the congress that really fixes the budget. But if legislators choose to follow Trump’s budgetary plan, Ramaswamy plans that the future American gross domestic product could be more than 4% smaller due to these cuts. This is roughly the size of the contraction known during the great recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009 and was the longest recession in the country since the Second World War.
In the end, he said, these cuts could end up costing the government itself a lot of money.
“The economy tomorrow will be smaller because you have decided to reduce this funding today,” he said. “And if your economy tomorrow is smaller, you will increase less taxes.”
