Target: Sean Duffy, Acting NASA Administrator
Goal: Do not move forward with cuts to NASA’s workforce and its important research.
Apollo 1, the Challenger, the Columbia: these names will endure forever as a testament to the ultimate sacrifices Americans were willing to make to explore vast unknown environments beyond Earth’s limits. The men and women who died in these tragedies had their names featured alongside 287 NASA employees – both current and former – who have spoken out against drastic cuts to the nation’s preeminent space institution. They join with civil servants at the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency to decry draconian cuts as damaging for their missions and as potentially dangerous for workers who remain.
Among the cuts made at NASA include the gutting of a safety authority, reported decommissioning of a room where space instruments are sterilized and made safe before usage, the elimination of a program to safely return the international space station and of an umanned Martian exploration mission, the defunding of both moon rockets and lunar stations, and the scrapping of a massive space telescope that had already been nearly completed. In addition, thousands of employees are on the chopping block, which threatens to further whittle away America’s competitive advantage in science as these highly trained engineers and scientists seek employment where their contributions will be appreciated. In a letter sent to the current head of NASA, affected individuals warned of the far-reaching consequences: “we dissent to the closing out of missions for which Congress has appropriated funding because it represents a permanent loss of capability to the United States both in space and on earth. We dissent to implementing indiscriminate cuts to NASA science and aeronautics research because this will leave the American people without the unique public good that NASA provides.”
Sign the petition below to demand America’s leaders stop abandoning the pursuit of progress.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Acting Administrator Duffy,
The space race captured the popular imagination in the 1960s and helped cement America’s rise to a world power. This administration once signaled an interest in refueling space exploration with more moon missions and an eventual journey to Mars. The creation of the Space Force was also a tacit acknowledgement of the critical role space can play on Earth itself. Yet recent efforts have been focused on building lunar nuclear reactors and on implementing severe cuts…the latter of which, coincidentally, will undermine the former.
The cuts to NASA and the sudden deemphasis and defunding of aerospace missions and research are a jarring course correction that threatens to leave America behind in the next big space race. And as pointed out strongly by both current and former NASA workers, the cuts also threaten safety and could cause a resurgence of avoidable tragedies like the Challenger explosion. Please do not hide behind “DEI” excuses or other political motivators. Fully support the mission of NASA and the human capacity for reaching unknown frontiers.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Neil Armstrong
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