In a Senate hearing on Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)—chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness—confirmed fears that he would be hostile to NASA's Earth-focused work. When talking with NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, Sen. Cruz expressed his concern that NASA has "lost its full focus" on its "core mission" of space exploration.
During the hearing, Cruz criticized NASA's focus on Earth sciences (i.e. climate change) using a chart of NASA's budget as a prop. He pointed to the 41% increase in budget for Earth sciences and the 7.6% decline in funding for exploration and space operations.
Bolden pushed back with two hard-hitting points. First Bolden mentioned how the decrease in space costs "was somewhat intentional because we were trying to get the cost of exploration down," specifically mentioning the now-defunct space shuttle program. He then hit Cruz with the snappier retort: "We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it — and that's understanding our environment."
As a result of the confrontation, the American Geophysical Union quickly sent Cruz a letter explaining the importance of Earth sciences in "understanding natural hazards, weather forecasting, air quality, and water availability, among other concerns" like "flood prediction, earthquake response and severe storm tracking."
One can hope that this stern rebuke from AGU's collective 60,000 scientists and NASA's chief will show Cruz the importance of studying the Earth and its climate, but given his nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, this seems doubtful—doubly so considering his stock holdingsin Chevron and ExxonMobil.
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