The pork-barrel spending of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) doesn't just fund terrestrial programs like military spending and immigration enforcement, it also rockets taxpayer money to outer space. Under the bill, which the president signed into law on Friday, NASA will receive nearly $10 billion, $7.4 billion of which will be allocated to finance the agency's Moon to Mars program.
The Moon to Mars program launched in November 2022 to establish humanity's presence "on and around the Moon before embarking on the first human missions to Mars" in the coming decades, according to NASA. To that end, the OBBBA allocates $700 million for the "procurement…of a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter," $2.6 billion for the Gateway lunar space station, and $4.1 billion for the Artemis IV and V missions, currently scheduled to launch in 2028 and 2029, respectively.
The prospect of a lunar colony and a Mars expedition may seem intriguing, but the OBBBA's funding for these objectives will likely lead to even more wasteful spending at NASA.
