HEADLINE: NASA Budget Debates, SpaceX Reliability, and International Space Updates GUEST NAME: Bob Zimmerman SUMMARY: Bob Zimmerman discusses Trump administration's NASA budget cuts, Congress's push to restore funding for missions like Chandra and New Ho
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
HEADLINE: NASA Budget Debates, SpaceX Reliability, and International Space Updates
GUEST NAME: Bob Zimmerman
SUMMARY: Bob Zimmerman discusses Trump administration's NASA budget cuts, Congress's push to restore funding for missions like Chandra and New Horizons. He also covers a SpaceX Starlink outage, Russia's shrinking space program, and the commercial space sector's growth. Zimmerman expresses skepticism about new sunspot predictions and explains M82 galaxy's star-forming activity.
DECEMBER 1956
Transcript
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| 0:23.6 | This is CBSI and the world. I'm John Baster. NASA, a budget proposal by the Trump administration, |
| 0:31.9 | removing billions from the NASA budget, which I recall somewhere in the $25 billion, was the budget that they were |
| 0:39.8 | moving billions from. Congress, however, has long been understood to have another opinion. |
| 0:47.1 | And helping me understand that is Bob Zimmerman, who keeps the website beyond the black. |
| 0:51.9 | This is about commercial space, but it's also about Congress wants to puff up NASA with |
| 0:59.1 | the usual budget, maybe a little more. |
| 1:01.6 | The contest is ferocious, but, Bob, a very good evening to you. |
| 1:06.2 | Is there suddenly doubts in Congress about restoring the billions that are missing from the Trump |
| 1:11.2 | administration's budget? That's my analysis, but let me go and give some back story. So the Trump |
| 1:17.6 | administration proposed a 24% reduction in NASA's budget, including a lot of cuts within the |
| 1:23.3 | science department, and specifically a lot of cuts which would shut down missions that were operational. |
| 1:29.8 | And as much as I am not against the major cuts at Nassar, I think there's a lot of waste there. |
| 1:35.2 | I don't think it's a, we could definitely remove some programs that aren't getting anything done. |
| 1:39.1 | I have some doubts about cutting, eliminating, operating spacecraft that, for very little money produce |
| 1:47.4 | things. |
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