Podcast: Do NASA’s Budget Cuts Spell Trouble For U.S. Aerospace? Mind The Gap!

NASA’s normally vibrant presence at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ showcase Aviation and Ascend events was cut to the bone this year as the agency faces crippling budget cuts. Aviation Week’s Guy Norris, Garrett Reim and Graham Warwick were in Las Vegas for the events. They share their impressions from there and concerns about what the NASA cuts could mean for U.S. competitiveness in commercial aviation and space.

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AI-Generated Transcript

Graham Warwick (00:22): Hello and welcome to Check 6. I'm Graham Warwick, executive editor for Technology at Aviation Week, and I'm joined today by Senior Editor Guy Norris and our Space and Emerging Technologies Editor, Garrett Reim. Now the three of us are together because we were all together last week at the AIAA Aviation and Ascend conferences in Las Vegas. So AIAA is the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and they organized two conferences, one Aviation, which is focused on the aviation industry and the other Ascend, which is focused on the space industry. And they brought them together for the last two years. So this was our second time in Las Vegas and it was quite a different event for us. So to give you a bit of a contrast here, in 2024 in Las Vegas, the combined event was about 3,700-3,800 people attended. It was very busy. 

(01:24): The halls were crowded and many of the presentation rooms and the exhibit hall were pretty busy. Now, this year it was quite different. It was quite quiet. The organizer said that the attendance was about somewhere over 2,800, which is quite a drop. And the reason for that was the chaos that we've seen in Washington, D.C., as the government has moved to cut down the size of some of the government agencies including NASA. And as a result of that they've restricted travel. So we know that usually about 400 NASA people come to the convention. They were restricted to 25 to going to Aviation and 25 going to Ascend. And the reason they could attend was if they were giving a presentation, all of the attendance for networking, for industry meetings, for technical committee meetings, all the things that go on at these conferences, that was not a reason for sending somebody. So there was a massively reduced also on the uniform side, there was almost no uniforms there, which was another big reduction. I don't know about Ascend, I was on the aviation side. Maybe Garrett can do that. But I'm going to pass you over now to Guy for his impressions and then we'll talk to Garrett about his impressions on the Ascend side and then we'll get into what's happening with NASA and the concerns that we have that were really surfaced by being at that event and seeing the impact of what's on Guy.

Guy Norris (03:01): Yeah, thanks Graham. Yeah, you're right. I mean the weird thing is you want to say it was a shadow of its previous incarnation, but that's not quite true because it was a really great show. There was tons going on, there was lots, not lots of news out of it, some great panels. But you're absolutely right from the attendance perspective, the numbers, you could clearly tell that the government and NASA side of it was a shadow of its former self. So just looking into, obviously as you mentioned, it was really to do with what's going on in Washington and the impact of these streamlining and budget cuts that are coming down the pike. And I just thought it was worth mentioning the fact that what we've seen really this sort of evisceration really of NASA's aeronautics research and Garrett will probably be able to parallel this exactly with what's going on in terms of the space science and space budgets within NASA. 

(04:14): I dunno, just talking to the other attendees there, it sort of made you realize how amazing NASA aeronautics has been for the industry and particularly for the U.S. industry over the years at a kind of value for money basis. Quite an extraordinary sort of thing. And just to give you an example, I mean we looked at the budgets, you and I, between over the past two decades where we've seen this up and down quite a lot of NASA aeronautic spending reaching I guess a low point in 2012, 2013 period perhaps. But what we're really seeing is you've got to remember the NASA overall budget, say roughly $20 billion of that at its peak. The aeronautics budget has not been more than 3.5% roughly speaking. So it's a relatively tiny amount of money for the U.S. budgets writ large. And yet when you think about what we've seen come out of NASA over those years, look back through the decades, super critical wing fly by wire winglets CFD, perfection in wind tunnels, which have been the envy of the world, aero acoustics electrified aircraft. 

(05:38): More recently the ERA environmentally responsible aviation program and what that spawned, icing, the energy efficient engine which gave birth of course to GE's GE 90 and the GEnX after that, this has all come out of an incredibly efficient well run small budget. And yet right now we're seeing the result. This is the first time you and I have physically seen the results, this outcome at a conference. It's the first time we've been at an AIAA conference since all these cuts happened. So to me that was one of the most striking things. And then just the other thing is the other visible thing was the exhibition area. I mean in previous years it's actually become pretty buoyant. There never was a huge exhibit there, but it was busy enough that especially you get these monumental centerpieces like NASA, Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed, the big exhibitors, this was very dramatically different. It was a big hole and not much going on in the inside, but what was there was great.

Graham Warwick (06:52): No, we have to make clear that we learned a lot. Both of us had, and I'm sure Garrett too found it very valuable, but it was almost more physical. It's obviously more emotional and physical to be there and see the impact of that. Garrett, I'm looking at it very myopically from the aviation side. I did not go over to the Ascend side other than they had some cool pods you could sit over on the Ascend side. And also the whole decor on the Ascend side was way more hip and cool than on the aviation side.

Garrett Reim (07:23): Space edge.

Graham Warwick (07:24): Yeah. Can you give us your take on this? Was it the same or different?

Garrett Reim (07:30): Very similar. Yeah. I mean the numbers are that Trump administration's proposing something like a 24% decrease in funding for NASA overall. And then the science and mission directorate gets like a 50% cut. And you felt that on the space side as well. I had thought that there was going to be an International Space Station research and development conference actually this week, the week following the Ascend Conference. And that was canceled entirely because of lack of NASA participation. And so I thought that there would be some NASA folks and attendees that would kind of shift over to Ascend, that things would sort of consolidate, but you didn't see much of that backfilling. It felt much less populated. Like you were mentioning. The conference hall used to feel more like a conventional trade show and it was mostly like people selling widgets or engineering services or testing. 

(08:28): And then of course the big guys like the Boeing and the Lockheeds and I was in the coffee line talking to the CEO of a space robotics and satellite company. And he cited those numbers that you had rattled off earlier about the number of NASA folks drastically declining. And for them, for this company, and I presume for many other companies, they come here to learn and to present themselves to others but also to network to meet with these people in the NASA programs and understand in finer detail what they're actually looking for, what they're trying to accomplish. And so they were disappointed that they didn't have that opportunity to network and connect with people. Yeah, so very similar. There was a huge swing in even political sentiment a couple years ago when I went to Ascend, just you could feel like the political discussion was way out in one direction. Now it's way the other. So the budget's moving all over the place and the things that people want to talk about, the subject matter is different too. So that was interesting as well.

Graham Warwick (09:41): Yeah, so you make the point there about networking and networking or sounds like just getting together over drinks and things like that, but it's not, it's just technical interchange. These conferences, these AIAA conferences are all about technical interchange sharing information. It's either through the technical presentations, the papers or through the committee meetings or through the presentations and other things on stage, and then just the people that are meeting in the corridors, et cetera. And that's what suffered here from this kind of the budget cuts. And I think the biggest thing that Guy and I felt, and oddly enough that during the conference there was in D.C., the National Academies there an Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, which is kind of an advisory board to NASA was holding its six monthly meeting. And Bob Pearce, who's the associate administrator for aviation mission director was not at Las Vegas, he was in D.C. and he presented at this thing and I listened in early in the morning before I went to the conference and he talked about what they're having to do to adjust to what is essentially on paper, it's like a 37 to 40% cut, but it's bigger.

(10:57): He says when you start looking inside what they're having to do, they're going to lose capabilities. He says, we are not going to be able to maintain our capabilities in all areas. So the U.S. industry is going to lose asset expertise in certain areas.

(11:13): So flight demonstration, they've got these big X-plane programs, they've not done very well with the big X-plane programs, but then that's it. They're not going to do any more big X-plane colonials, they're going to go back to doing small programs, probably unmanned or modifications of airplanes. So that's a loss of capability there in terms of trying to do these sort of large scale. The biggest thing that he was asked about and that he said is a major concern and Guy, and I identified this, several of our contacts there, people that we meet regularly are retiring early, right? They're taking the way that the government is offering to try and get the workforce down. Not only them though, but the middle group of people, people who were being groomed to be the next project leaders, the next sort of the leader of their discipline and the repository of the knowledge they're leaving as well.

(12:07): And it's hollowing out this middle bit of NASA so that these people are leaving at the end of their careers, massive knowledge that they have. And then the people that they were going to bring along behind them are leaving as well. So you are emptying out this middle bit of NASA expertise. And the lesson of the past is that NASA is quite often the only place that expertise survives until the industry gets interested again. And the classic of that is hypersonics, the U.S. got lost interest in hypersonics after X-51 back in whenever it was 2000 something. And there was a tiny budget line within NASA that kept their hypersonics team together. And when the U.S. suddenly got interested in hypersonics again through the DOD, it was that core group of NASA people that helped rebuild the NASA. And we are going to lose capabilities if we let this go the way it's going. And that is kind of what you saw the show floor on the event floor, you were seeing the beginnings of that loss of capability and that's what has to be done. So Garrett, you wanted to say something?

Garrett Reim (13:18): Yeah, no, I just wanted to second everything you said, but then point out that we're in this huge budget crunch and there's consensus like, well, something needs to get trimmed, but part of the problem is there's no vision going forward. What are the priorities? It was maybe because when Musk was involved in the administration, maybe we're going to do more with Mars and now Musk is out of the administration. And so even sort of the pecking order's just not clear to anybody. So whether or not cuts are good or bad, what needs to be done and what needs to be cut and what is the priority, it's just nobody knows and makes planning really hard for these small guys.

Guy Norris (13:57): And just to follow on from Garrett, I mean another thing that I really saw was there was one day Garrett left had to leave and I covered some of the space action as well. And they were saying that just minding the gap essentially to making sure that there is a LEO capability, there has to be a plan going forward and they just couldn't see one. And they were sort of saying not only that but to service the space station until the commercial platforms are really up and launched. But just to hammer home again on the aeronautic side, what you were saying, Graham, about this sudden it's another gap, isn't it really this next generation below that was being groomed really to take over. It's just what we got was this appalling sense of lack of appreciation of what NASA has been able to do, I think really for the U.S.

(14:57): And it is really sort of being, I don't know, on the old star of politics really it's being sort of sacrificed for the short term expediency, all because the word sustainability has become this dirty word, which is ironic. And yet sustainability equals efficiency. And it's the reason that U.S. aeronautics has been able to dominate the industry for the past 50 or 60 years is because it's led the way in efficiency. Everybody wants to burn less fuel because you make more money that way commercially anyway. Or you go further if you're a military transporter and interested in strategic advantage. So what we quickly should probably go through a few of the other areas that we covered, one of which was the blended wing body, which was a pretty big deal in the aeronautics side of the aviation conference this time. Jet Zero gave an update on that, included some rare presentations from actual airlines that have Delta and United that want to use it, but also from the Air Force themselves.

(16:13): They kind of, again, hammered home the fact that they really could do with this extended range advantage, which you get from greater efficiency. So I think that was another thing. We also kind of heard about future propulsion concepts, Scaled Composites was there revealing some new projects that they'd been working on. So I mean there was a lot going on. And one of the other ones I thought I quickly mentioned, which I always love about this conference, is the unidentified aerial phenomenon, or there was a very interesting presentation on the fact that there's definitely a national security implication. Mike Gold, who's the former NASA associate administrator, was very candid about it on stage saying that they needed to be this new emphasis really on coordination and taking this seriously and really better data collection. So anyway, again, I just love this conference for the breadth of which it covers, but also I was so worried about what I saw there for the future of the U.S. and its position losing this massive capability for such a short term gain. I dunno, as Garrett says, NASA, obviously nobody would disagree that everybody needs to be trimmed and profiled and streamlined now and again, but this is beyond that.

Graham Warwick (17:48): Yeah, I think your term mind the gap. I think all of our listeners should be very mindful of the gap that is opening up here. And if you have something to say about it, if you can say it to somebody who's got some power and say, get to your congressman as they say and all that sort of stuff, just don't sit here and assume somebody else is going to close this gap for you. This gap is opening up and unless something is done, it's going to stay open and that's going to be a loss of capability. As Guy says, it's about efficiency, it's about competitiveness in the space side, it's about innovation and opening up new markets. And if we don't invest in the right way, that gap, that mind the gap you're going to fall through and end up on the third rail or whatever.

(18:35): So folks, we're going to wrap at that, but just be really aware of what is happening in our industry now. So that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you Guy and Garrett for joining us. And thanks also to our producer, Guy Ferneyhough in London. And of course all of you for listening. If you haven't already, be sure to follow Check 6 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you never miss an episode. If you found today's discussion helpful, please consider leaving us a star rating or review. Better yet, share this episode with a friend or colleague. Bye for now and Mind the Gap.

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