Bill Nye told NBC News that Donald Trump is making a “huge mistake” when it comes to a proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 23%, which was announced earlier this month amid national attention around NASA‘s Artemis II flyby moon mission.
“NASA is the best brand the U.S. has. People around the world recognize NASA,” Nye said. “The word science is in the Constitution. That’s what keeps the U.S. ahead. You cannot be a leader in space without being a leader in science. It’s just a mistake.”
The Trump administration previously tried to cut NASA’s $24.4 billion budget by 18% but was blocked by members of Congress, which approved the NASA budget in January. Nye said the first attempt was “dead on arrival” and “why it’s happened again is not clear,” although the timing around the Artemis II mission is suspicious.
“Objectively, this time, the President’s Budget Request is written — how would I describe — it’s much lazier… There are typos; they refer to 2026 instead of 2027, and they left out some language arbitrarily. It’s sort of cut and paste without paying attention,” Nye added about the new budget cut proposal.
Artemis II astronauts Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch set out on a 10-day mission around the moon earlier this month on NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The mission marked the furthest any space crew had traveled away from Earth and generated global headlines around the U.S. space program. Hollywood even joined the media blitz as “Project Hail Mary” star Ryan Gosling recorded a video message for the astronauts before they blasted off.
“We were all really lucky. We got to watch ‘Hail Mary’ when we were in quarantine [before launch],” Hansen later revealed when asked about what message he would give Gosling. “That was a real treat that they sent us a link to view that at home with our families, getting us ready to go on our own space adventure. I would just say to Ryan, art imitates science and vice versa, it seems. He did a great job in that movie. It’s wonderful to see people really leaning into those roles.”
Watch Nye’s interview with NBC News in the video below.
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