What to watch for in a second Trump administration

The 2024 U.S. presidential election has concluded: Donald Trump will return to the White House, backed by Republican control of both chambers of Congress. This governing trifecta will provide the second Trump Administration with significant leeway to enact his policy agenda, including for space exploration. What will it look like?

As of this article’s publication, it remains a difficult question to answer. The Trump campaign laid out no detailed policy agenda for space, and no personnel appointments have been made for NASA or the National Space Council. There are also several unusual factors at play that could result in historic changes to NASA, though the likelihood of these occurring is highly uncertain. These include the Trump campaign’s proposals to remove civil servant protections to the government’s workforce, to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds on programs Trump considers wasteful, and the impact of SpaceX CEO and Trump confidant Elon Musk on space exploration policy and NASA’s bureaucracy.

There will be some clarity on certain issues in the coming months, such as the personnel appointed to NASA and other space-adjacent positions. Others, such as the reclassification of civil servants and the power to not disburse appropriated funds, will almost certainly face legal challenges that could take years to resolve. Some, such as the wholesale reconfiguration of government in the name of efficiency, seem unlikely given the slim margins of Republican control in Congress. The exact role and impact of Elon Musk on space policy is impossible to model accurately, given its ahistorical nature.

Despite these uncertainties, there is still a set of topics worth considering.

Budget cuts and reducing the size of government

Though Trump oversaw increases in discretionary spending during his first term, there are reasons to believe this won’t be the case in the next four years. Interest rates are higher, increasing the cost of government borrowing. Tax cuts proposed by the Trump campaign, which are very likely to be enacted to some degree by a friendly Congress, could add trillions of dollars of new debt unless spending cuts offset them. And mitigating inflation will be critical; reducing government spending is a deflationary tool. Altogether, this suggests a very different fiscal policy than the first Trump administration.

Trump has also stated that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a “Department of Government Efficiency,” which, though not an actual department, is an external commission tasked with identifying trillions of dollars’ worth of cuts by rooting out “inefficiencies” in the government bureaucracy. Exactly how this will impact NASA is anyone’s guess, though obviously, major projects like the Space Launch System, Orion, and Mars Sample Return will receive scrutiny. Closing and consolidating NASA centers may also be possible, though the politics of such an action would be difficult. More on this later.

If campaign promises are to be believed, Social Security, Medicare, and national defense spending will be spared any spending cuts. Combined, these items account for more than half of all government spending, meaning that any cuts will disproportionately fall upon “discretionary” accounts that fund NASA. The space agency rarely bucks trends of overall discretionary spending: when overall spending goes up, NASA’s budget tends to go up; when spending goes down, so goes NASA funding.

Even modest (2%) budget cuts in the last two years disrupted major NASA programs and led to layoffs at JPL and other centers. Combined with recent inflation, these cuts have diminished NASA’s spending power by billions of dollars. Larger cuts will cause severe strain across the agency, leading to further delays and wholesale program cancelations. 

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is particularly vulnerable. The human spaceflight program addresses geostrategic and symbolic needs of the nation, particularly in light of China’s increasing space ambitions at the Moon. It is the national space priority. Congress has already prioritized Artemis funding in the last two funding cycles; science and other directorates absorbed the majority of NASA’s budget cuts. Politically speaking, the agency’s science-focused centers are located in Democratic-majority states, such as California and Maryland, whereas NASA’s human spaceflight-focused centers are located primarily in Republican states, such as Texas, Florida, and Alabama. While NASA remains blessedly non-partisan, the simple fact is that Republican elected officials will have more sway over federal spending than Democrats, who are functionally shut out of power in Washington. 

The Moon vs Mars?

The first Trump Administration was unusually productive in setting space policy, notably establishing the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface. The Biden administration, not known for embracing Trump’s policies, continued the program nonetheless—marking the first time a human lunar exploration program survived a presidential transition since the Apollo era. Artemis, however, appears to be collapsing under its own complexity, with ongoing reports of delays, management problems, and growing costs. There has been an increasing number of public proposals to reimagine Artemis, many of which identify the Space Launch System and Lunar Gateway as particularly problematic.

Artemis will likely be the focus of the next administration’s NASA transition team, and refinements to the program appear likely given its growing budget and timelines. That would create a somewhat strange situation wherein NASA’s lunar program, after surviving a presidential transition to the opposite party, may not survive intact a return to the administration that created it in the first place.

I expect the Moon to remain the organizing destination for NASA’s human spaceflight program, however. This is both because so much has already been invested in creating a new cis-lunar economy and because China’s open ambitions to land on the Moon cannot go unmatched by the United States. 

That doesn’t preclude the addition of other destinations, however.

The Musk factor

As Elon Musk aligned himself with Trump on the campaign trail, Trump started to talk more about Mars. “Elon, get those rocket ships going, because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term,” he said in September of 2024.

Close observers of Trump during his first term will note that whenever the President spoke extemporaneously about space exploration, he spoke about sending humans to Mars, even as his administration was establishing the Artemis lunar program. He appears to have a natural affinity for the idea and understands the potent symbolism of securing the achievement during his administration.

Elon Musk is in a unique position to propose and implement a national policy committing the U.S. to a crash humans-to-Mars program. After all, Starship is a Mars ship.

How this would work is open to various pathways and pitfalls. SpaceX could be the beneficiary of a new NASA contract and billions in federal funds for a rapid Mars exploration effort. That could take time to work its way through the congressional appropriations process, which won't begin in earnest until the incoming administration releases its budget request for FY 2026 sometime next Spring. Reducing the regulatory oversight of SpaceX is a more rapid (and free) option. Recently, SpaceX claimed the regulatory burdens to secure launch licenses for Starship unnecessarily slowed the pace of the program, a complaint echoed by a number of Republican members of Congress. Under Trump, the FAA will likely become a more supportive partner.

Many experts (myself included) believe that a 2028 timeline for human landings is impossible given the range of technical challenges remaining to be solved; even so, we’d see real progress in sending humans to Mars at a rate unprecedented in human history.

Musk could also target large NASA programs for cancellation via the Department of Government Efficiency commission. The Space Launch System, Gateway, Orion, and Mars Sample Return could all easily be targeted, regardless of the enormous conflicts of interest Musk has when proposing to cancel programs that essentially compete with SpaceX projects. The reality of canceling those programs, many of which have enjoyed rock-solid support from Congress over the past decade, will be no easy task, and it is unclear that the Trump Administration would want to pick a fight with members of its own party, particularly given the narrow advantage Republicans hold in both congressional chambers. This is an area to watch closely.

There is always the possibility that Musk could have a falling out with Trump, a fate familiar to many of the President’s advisors over the years. Both men are accustomed to being the primary decision-makers and center of attention in their respective arenas. Musk is not an elected official; his influence is a function of Trump’s embrace. If this happens, and if it occurs early enough in Trump's next presidency, the grand policy pronouncements of Elon Musk could amount to nothing at all. 

The Vance factor

J.D. Vance, as Vice President, will assume the chairmanship of the National Space Council, assuming Trump deigns to keep it. Unlike Mike Pence, a noted space supporter with a personal passion for the subject, Vance shows no public proclivity for space. Much of the effectiveness of the Space Council is a function of the Vice President’s commitment to the effort and of their relationship with the President himself, which provides the necessary influence to make effective policy in the executive branch. Absent this high-level attention, the Space Council could be less effective and even sidelined by Elon Musk.

Good for space, bad for NASA?

Space has increased in political prominence over the past decade, both as a national security imperative and as a strategic domestic industry. Despite the uncertainties mentioned above, space will retain a high status in the second Trump term. We can look to his first term and the statements made during the campaign as evidence. NASA, however, may not enjoy the full benefit of this attention, particularly given the possible changes to the civil service workforce, budget cuts, and potentially handing the prize effort of sending humans to Mars over to SpaceX. 

Elizabeth Koenck, The Planetary Society’s Zed Factor Fellow in our policy department, quipped that the next four years could be good for space but bad for NASA. I think that’s an astute observation. “Space” and “NASA” are no longer synonymous; the rapid maturation of the commercial space sector and the unprecedented innovation of SpaceX have ended NASA’s monopoly on space exploration. Despite calls for caution by a recent National Academies report on NASA’s capabilities, the trend toward commercial services contracting will continue, and non-public space organizations will be granted ever more opportunity to prove themselves in space.

Exactly how NASA will fare is hard to say. Its immediate fate is tethered to a number of dramatic policy changes which, despite having no direct connection to space, will nonetheless affect NASA’s ability to pursue its exploration goals. The agency may end up transformed, leaner and focused on its core responsibilities. Absent careful and committed leadership during these radical changes, however, the agency could end up a shell of itself, having become nothing more than a pass-through funding source for the space industry. I think that’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. The individuals selected by President-elect Trump to lead NASA and the Space Council, and the commitment they have, or don’t, to the idea of NASA as the U.S. public’s primary envoy to the stars, will be worth watching as they guide the agency going forward.