How NASA Can Make the Moon Great Again
An unhinged 2026 U.S. budget proposal would hollow NASA to a husk bent to Elon Musk’s whims. Only one mission can save the space agency
Good news, folks. We’re going to beat China to the moon. What’s that, you say? We did that already, a half-century ago on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface. The U.S. beat everyone, left a plaque, a flag and even some astronaut waste baggies. It was a pretty big deal.
Well, we’re going back to the future, “beating China back to the moon,” and then “putting the first human on Mars,” according to the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 U.S. $1.45 trillion discretionary federal budget. In the May budget proposal, at merely $7 billion a year, NASA will land a pair of boots, probably, with a man (surely a bro) wearing them, on the lunar surface once more. Before a Chinese pair of boots can arrive. The only catch is that the budget also cuts NASA’s overall funding by 25 percent, to $18.56 billion a year, while shifting cash to moon landings, plus another $1 billion somehow set aside to send more U.S. boots to Mars. Riding on one of Elon Musk’s exploding Starships, U.S. boots will land on the moon, with the spacecraft, perhaps, maybe, not toppling over after landing vertically on the unstable lunar surface, who knows, it’s not like that might not happen, by the notional date of 2027. We can’t rebuild bridges in two years, but maybe NASA will build a lunar landing pad by then. Testing started in April. On Earth.
You might see the problem—that 2027 date still leaves China time to get Chinese boots on the moon ahead of us, boots worn by a Chinese person (perhaps not even a tech bro). In a surprising moment of sensible thinking, the Trump administration has taken my September advice to kill the white elephant $23 billion Space Launch System rocket, after the (notional) 2027 Artemis III moon landing mission. Good job. But to get U.S. boots on the lunar surface sooner, we are going to need a “really smart” crash mission.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
That’s why I’m formally proposing, here, the 2025 NASA Boot Lander mission. This modest proposal (full credit to the unnamed former NASA scientist who put the idea in my head) will land a pair of genuine U.S.-assembled boots (some parts made in China, Mexico or Canada) on the moon’s south pole. We’ll beat the Chinese at this lunar footwear game.
Yes, boots. On the moon. American ones. What could be more American than a handsome pair of cowboy boots (or perhaps whatever ICE agents use to kick in the doors of people’s homes), perched on the moon’s bottom? Maybe with one of those starched flags on a stick standing in one of them. Or Trump 2024 ones (full disclosure: made in China). Make the Moon Great Again!
After all, when you really get down to it, the boot prints left behind on the moon, ones with solid treads that leave a “Made in USA” imprint, are the whole point. And beating the Chinese, obviously, also super-duper important. Who cares if a tech bro, or lesser kind of employee, is actually wearing the boots when it happens? Nobody who matters. If a boot steps on the moon, does anyone hear it? No. You can’t even hear screaming (much less sarcasm in an opinion piece) in space. That’s just science. The moon doesn’t know the difference, and neither will anyone who’s told it’s just as good by the Trump administration. At present, that seems to work for a lot of people.
Plus, it’s easier and cheaper than sending boots with people in them. No need for pricey poop bags. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket could deliver 37,000 pounds of cargo to Mars, for $90 million, much less than that $7 billion. Surely one could drop a pair of boots on the moon, on the way to Mars. I’m also sure we could (briefly) rehire one of the scientists fired under the new NASA budget to figure out how much boots weigh on the moon. Probably less than 37,000 pounds. Just don’t let whoever came up with the shelf-emptying tariffs do the math. Mission accomplished.
Now if you think a Boot LanderTM sounds stupid, then maybe consider the actual Trump administration plan for NASA. Agency administrator nominee Jared Isaacman demurred to Senators at a nomination hearing way back in April, three weeks ago, on whether he would cancel a lunar “Gateway” space station seen in the first Trump administration as a stepping stone to both the moon and Mars. “NASA will be a force multiplier for science,” Isaacman told the lawmakers asked to vote him into high office. “We will launch more telescopes, more probes, more rovers and endeavor to understand our planet and the universe beyond.”
Whoops. Turns out that that’s not true. We’re doing the opposite, with a $6 billion cut to everything but human space exploration at NASA. Good riddance to the pointless Gateway, and Boeing’s suspect Orion capsule. But on the science front, the proposed budget is a crash landing for Isaacman’s proclamations. He mouthed support for nuclear electric propulsion, and nuclear thermal propulsion, but the budget proposes “eliminating failing space propulsion projects” in a $531 million cut to the NASA division that funds these competitors to SpaceX rockets to Mars, as well as other seed-corn technologies for future exploration. The budget, “eliminates funding for low-priority climate monitoring satellites,” because who cares about disasters that cost the country $150 billion a year, and “restructures the gold-plated, two-billion-dollar Landsat Next mission,” which sounds like a lot of gold-plating until you realize it will return more than $33 billion in value to the country every year. Education for the next generation of NASA engineers would be killed. A leaked early version of the full budget would also eliminate the $3.5 billion Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, Scientific American reported, despite it coming in under budget and ahead of schedule, almost ready for a year-early 2026 launch. So much for finding alien worlds circling nearby stars and clues to the galaxy-tugging dark energy that might reveal new physics. We’ve got boots to land.
Kenneth Chang of the New York Times noted that NASA “would largely become the National Moon and Mars Administration” under the budget, throwing useful science overboard in pursuit of Musk’s lucrative (for Musk) Mars fantasies.
If that doesn’t sound foolish, I have some great boots to sell you. They’re on sale and claim they’re not made in China.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.