The great SpaceX IPO is looming, allowing outside investors — including regular Joe Schmoes, or retail investors — to buy a stake in one of the buzziest and most controversial companies on the planet for the first time. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the best investment opportunity you’ll see this decade or a fool’s errand to rip off credulous Musk fanboys. With valuations of the company going to sky-high levels, over $1 trillion according to some estimates, there’s certainly a furor around the potential for rich returns. 

But is there really any money to be made in space? 

Let’s be clear: There are plenty of companies making money right now by providing space services. From Earth observation satellites to communications to launch services, there already exists a whole ecosystem of companies working in low Earth orbit, providing invaluable services to people on the ground.

Where the question gets trickier is when we start to look at the economics of launching humans into space, or sending missions to the Moon or beyond into deep space. These are SpaceX’s stated aims — or at least, the loudly stated aims of Elon Musk, so it’s reasonable to assume that’s where the company has set its long-term sights. And SpaceX is the dominant force in the space economy right now, so if anyone can make this work, it can. There have been suggestions that there’s money to be made in mining asteroids, or extracting rare earth elements from the Moon, or performing drug research in microgravity, but there is vigorous debate among experts over the business cases for these plans. 

It’s essentially just very, very expensive to do anything in space, with costs ballooning due to the price of a ride on a rocket, the extremely high level of reliability and safety needed for any hardware that you launch, the weight constraints, lack of opportunity for maintenance, and the need to secure power and shield from space radiation. That’s all without mentioning the astronomically higher costs that come when humans are being launched as well. It’s much cheaper to do your work on the ground, whether it’s research or resource extraction. 

In practice, it’s unlikely that anything you could dig up from an asteroid, for example, would justify the cost of sending a mission there right now. Take NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled to an asteroid to acquire a sample and bring it back to Earth for scientific purposes. It cost over $1 billion and was a decades-long undertaking of tremendous engineering skill and expertise that succeeded — impressively — at returning around 120 grams of material. Even in the case where an asteroid is known to be made of potentially valuable metals, even if a mission were purpose-built for the goal of mining and did manage to return and land those metals safely on Earth, trying to flog huge quantities of those metals would likely lessen their value anyway as the market became flooded.

Then there is the new crop of up-and-coming space economy ideas, like AI data centers in space or space-based solar power. These are technologies that work on Earth, and could theoretically be made to work in space, with their affordability aided as the price of doing anything in space drops as technologies and markets mature. The justification is that data centers gobble up electricity and water for cooling, using up power and creating pollution, but if they were in space then they could take advantage of plentiful solar energy and cooler ambient temperatures — though experts warn that the issues of space debris and orbital overcrowding are a risk, and that emissions of infrared radiation could interfere with astronomy. So could a company make money in these enterprises? Potentially. Has any company got a concrete plan for how to do it yet? Nope.

Some of the teething problems of space commercialization can be seen in NASA’s uncertainty over the future of the International Space Station. Now old and outdated, the ISS will need to be deorbited in the next few years, and the plan was to replace it with a number of different commercial space stations. NASA would financially support the development of these stations, then become a customer of them, sending its astronauts on stints there to perform the same space research the agency has always done.

At least, that was the plan. Progress on the commercial space stations was slow, and last month NASA pivoted to an entirely different approach due to a limited budget. The hope had been that private space stations could be funded by space tourism and other commercial ventures, but that source of revenue isn’t looking as promising as it once was: Joel Montalbano, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, acknowledged that NASA had expected the space tourism market to take off and pump money into the sector, but that had failed to materialize. Now, the fate of humans in space is up in the air.

There’s a warning there. The promise of money to be made in space tourism “is actually somewhat emblematic of this larger discussion,” says Wendy Whitman Cobb of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. For all the optimistic projections about the forthcoming space economy, “there’s a real question as to whether that market actually materializes or not.”

First, companies were going to pay to conduct research in microgravity. Then, millionaires were going to save us by booking joy rides into space for fun. Now, we’re going to solve the resource-gobbling problems of AI by shoving data centers into space. Some of these ideas could eventually turn a profit, but it’s far from clear that any of them will generate enough money to pay the enormous costs of doing anything off Earth.

For SpaceX, though, the company doesn’t need to make money in any one particular aspect of the space economy. It has its fingers in enough pies, from launch to satellite internet to xAI, that the gamble is on whether at least some of these enterprises will make enough money to cover the rest. 

“That’s part of what this is a bet on as well, which is that the market will come up with more business cases we can’t foresee,” says Matthew C. Weinzierl, a professor at Harvard Business School. “[SpaceX] have such a dominant position in the sector, that to the extent people believe there’s at least a reasonable chance that the pie in space is gonna get really big, SpaceX is going to claim an enormous share of that pie. Because they’re creating it in many ways.”

And to a significant degree, the question of whether there’s money to be made in space is a question of timescales. “In a thousand years, do I think there will be a vibrant space economy? Yes, I do. I think we should probably count on that. But that’s a long time,” says Weinzierl. 

In the more immediate term, there’s not necessarily a business case for space beyond low Earth orbit right now. “Short of some sort of technological or scientific breakthrough, in the next five to 10 years, I’m skeptical,” says Whitman Cobb.

Government contracts will continue to be a significant if not the primary source of revenue for most space companies, which could bridge the gap between the short- and long-term views of space economics. There are space services that exist now and are in successful use, from launch providers like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to Earth observation services like those from Planet and Vantor (previously Maxar). 

SpaceX services including the use of Starlink and the Falcon 9 are now deeply intertwined with the US defense sector, to an extent that has some lawmakers concerned, but that offers the company a degree of stability. Whether there’s peace or war on Earth, defense contractors stand to make good money.

“The national security piece gives you sort of a floor below which it’s hard to imagine SpaceX falling,” says Weinzierl. For investors, he says, that makes it an appealing choice, especially for those looking to get into the sometimes risky world of space investment: “If you want to be a part of space, [SpaceX] feels in many ways like the safest bet.”

The importance of government contracts for space companies isn’t new, points out Marit Undseth of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). But compared to legacy space companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, or Northrop Grumman, the difference is the degree to which SpaceX has vertical integration.

“What we have now is that SpaceX controls launch, even manufacturing. It has a unique position in the space industry, and even in the space economy,” Undseth says. But with this prominent role can come a higher degree of scrutiny: “It’s the government’s role to ensure that there’s competition at all possible levels, and to adjust the advantages of incumbents and first movers.”

Because that first mover advantage is real and significant. With loose regulation around the use of space, there is a degree of first-come-first-served when it comes to cornering the market on certain orbital positions or parts of the spectrum. SpaceX has a big leg up over competitors from having gotten there first.

As for a push for more regulation in the space market, that’s “a very touchy subject,” Undseth says, and there isn’t clear agreement between differing nations, NGOs, or companies on what reasonable regulation would look like. “Everybody understands the need for competition, but it’s also very difficult to put that into practice.”

Then there’s a question of how becoming a public company with heavy reliance on defense contracts will affect SpaceX in the long term. The company has built its reputation and success on being willing and able to test, fail, and iterate again, and on not being afraid of controversy or of pouring money into projects like Starship that may never really be financially viable on their own. Will stockholders accept that approach once their own money is on the line? 

“The defense contractors we have here in the United States have become incredibly risk-averse,” says Whitman Cobb. “Can SpaceX retain its unique organizational culture as one that is innovative and focused on the future? … Are they going to be able to retain what makes them a unique and special company by going public?”

It’s hard to speculate on the financial future of SpaceX because the company is so opaque from the outside. It says it is making money from Starlink, but how much? How much is Starship costing to develop, and how is it going to make that money back? How reliant is the company on government contracts, and is there really a market for its services that can make it financially independent? 

No one knows. But the IPO will at least give experts a chance to finally see inside the company’s financials. “I personally can’t wait for the IPO,” says Whitman Cobb. “Not to buy it, but just to get some more insight on what SpaceX looks like as an actual company.”

So what are the potential investors in SpaceX buying? A meme stock? A piece of the future of the human race? A defense contractor run by an unstable and highly distractible leader? 

Whatever the truth turns out to be, people who are thinking of putting money into SpaceX presumably know what they are getting into. “Markets can be impatient for quarterly earnings, and they really want you to hit your targets,” Weinzierl says. But “anybody buying into SpaceX has to understand that’s not the asset they’re buying.”

As the Artemis II astronauts prepare for the most dramatic and potentially dangerous part of their mission — reentry into Earth’s atmosphere — the eyes of the world will be on the Orion capsule and the people inside it. Getting glimpses into the capsule during the mission, the public has been able to observe the features of the astronaut’s lives, from the screens where they receive messages from Earth to the bathroom they use and how it was fixed when it broke.

Every single piece of technology in the Orion capsule has been designed not just to withstand the epic G-forces of launch and landing, but also to optimize for human interfacing. And those human factors — the personal, sometimes intangible feeling of interacting with technology that just works in a way that is intuitive and enhances daily life — are now at the forefront of spacecraft design.

The first and foremost principle of human factors has always been safety. That means safety for the crew, and secondarily, safety for the spacecraft as well. The capsule undergoes rigorous testing to ensure that it can withstand the tremendous forces of reentry, but so do seemingly mundane objects, which become crucially important.

When you are preparing to smash into the atmosphere at a speed of almost 25,000mph, you better make sure that you’re sitting in a well-designed seat, for example. 

“Seats can save lives,” says Olga Bannova, director of the space architecture graduate program at the University of Houston. Seats must handle massive impact loads while transferring as little force as possible to the astronauts sitting in them, and good seat design is considered the most effective way to prevent injuries during landing, especially during emergencies. Seats need to be comfortable, even when astronauts have extreme G-forces pushing them into the seat during reentry, but they also need to provide support to delicate human frames while allowing natural movements.

Orion’s seats are “designed to accommodate nearly 99 percent of the human population,” according to NASA, and are adjustable to account for individual variation and to allow movements to reach important controls even when wearing a pressure suit. They can also be dismantled and packed away if needed, to give the crew more room to work in the small capsule space.

These same G-forces that act on the seats make it difficult for astronauts to even lift their hands to touch a control screen at times, so the Artemis II astronauts will use control devices like the rotational hand controller, which looks a bit like a joystick, or the cursor control device, which has similar inputs to a gamepad, in order to interact with the spacecraft even when larger physical movements are difficult or impossible.

Human factors go beyond just covering safety basics. Designers are increasingly considering psychological factors like comfort and privacy for space missions, such as giving astronauts their choice of sleeping options. Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman said this week, for example, that he likes to sleep under Orion’s displays to be nearby in case anything goes wrong, but his fellow astronaut Christina Koch prefers to sleep “suspended like a bat,” while pilot Victor Glover likes to tuck himself into a small nook near the ceiling. 

And as anyone who has ever had a roommate knows, it can be hard to live in close proximity to the noises, odors, and movements of another human being. That’s why designers consider acoustics and odor control when creating interiors, as well as giving astronauts small pockets of privacy where it’s possible to do so. That means that flight hardware needs to pass acoustic testing to ensure it isn’t too noisy and distracting, and creating an odor control system for Orion’s toilet — though this particular bit of hardware had a few teething issues.

This kind of attention to user experience isn’t just window dressing, but rather a key part of getting the best out of the astronauts. The approach is “thinking about comfort as a requirement for productive work and for fulfilling mission goals,” Bannova said. Astronauts are highly skilled and extremely resilient, she pointed out, but “we don’t need to squeeze them!”

“Human factors are now a design requirement, not just a nice-to-have,” says Sebastian Aristotelis, lead architect at SAGA, a company that designs space habitats and technology experiments which have flown on the ISS. 

For him, a well-designed and thought-out environment is not just a secondary consideration but a psychological boost as well: “I would argue that it’s actually an important part of the safety metrics. I feel more safe if I’m in a capsule that is well designed because it shows that there’s been enough resources, that you have not skipped any functions or requirements of making this capsule a reality.”

Exactly what good design entails is somewhat subjective. It includes, for example, whether you like the look of exposed fasteners, or whether you’d prefer a smoother and more minimal surface. Those design differences are apparent when comparing the NASA Orion capsule with the SpaceX Crew Dragon interior. These two craft have somewhat different functions so they aren’t entirely comparable, but you can clearly see a more pragmatic engineering approach in Orion, while there’s a more vertically integrated, branded look to the Dragon.

There are advantages to a simplified design. You don’t want dangling wires that could get in the way and impede movement in an emergency. If an environment is visually busy, it’s easier to misplace an important tool. But you also want equipment to be accessible and easy to maintain, with its function immediately obvious. Whether you’re going for a more functional or more sleek look, everything in a spacecraft “needs to be simple and pragmatic, and clean, and easy to take apart and put back together,” Aristotelis says.

Achieving this kind of intuitive design requires working closely with astronauts themselves.

Bannova agreed, linking the principles of design on Earth to those for space: “Architecture exists for people. We design for clients. If it’s not designed well for people to live, work, communicate, socialize, do whatever they need to fulfill their cultural needs, then it’s not good architecture.”

Another prominent difference between the Orion and Dragon capsules is the approach to information display and interaction. Dragon has three large touchscreens as its main display system, while Orion has many more buttons, switches, and inputs. 

Partly this is about the differing functions of the vehicles, as Dragon is specialized for low Earth orbit missions such as ferrying astronauts to the ISS, while Orion must also tackle the challenges of deep space exploration. That means Orion needs more space for cargo capacity to make room for extra supplies for longer missions, as well as the flexibility to carry more than four astronauts if needed. But the different visual appearances of the capsules also represent differing approaches to the problem of what information to display to a crew.

At first glance it might seem sensible to give the crew access to as much information about the spacecraft as possible, allowing them to pick out whatever data they need at any moment. But too much information can be overwhelming, and can make it harder to determine what’s truly important for a given situation.

Designers help here too, by creating interfaces that give the right information at the right time. “There is a safety element to it, because a lot of design is actually organization of information,” says Aristotelis. “Regardless of whether you’re designing phones or spaces or products, it’s giving you the right information at the right time and not overwhelming you with information that you don’t need.”

That’s particularly true as AI and onboard software becomes an increasingly large part of space missions. More and more of the functions of controlling a spacecraft like Orion’s altitude and speed are being taken on by the software, putting the astronauts in largely a supervisory role.

“The software is the primary flyer of the spacecraft,” Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said in a video about Orion, comparing the experience of flying the spacecraft to his background in aircraft piloting. “In an aircraft the software is really helping the pilot, and I think now it’s almost like we are helping the software.”

There’s a clear principle that remains in place, though, that software may be taking on more tasks, but humans should always be able to take control if and when needed. One of the reasons that astronauts are selected is their ability to think calmly and creatively in demanding situations. They must be able to make split-second decisions that software cannot.

Software can be an assistant, “but the crew should be able to override,” Bannova says. “They have to have a way of making a decision that might be unconventional, but still might be the right decision — for example in emergency situations.” 

“One thing that I’ve learnt from astronauts is that they want to be able to control their own environment,” Aristotelis says, particularly pointing to temperature and climate control as something that astronauts like to have individual control over. 

Of course, not every system on a spacecraft can be tweaked by the users. Some essential systems need to operate in a fixed way: “Architecture is subjective, but certain parts have to be designed in the most efficient, optimized, easy-to-repair and -maintain way. And those systems — life support systems, atmospheric generation systems, water recycling — must be designed as close to perfect as possible,” Bannova says.

However, you can contrast these essential systems with more personal spaces like crew quarters, where astronauts can make their own choices about lighting, temperature, and decoration. For engineers and architects working on space environments, that means working with psychologists and sociologists, Bannova says: “That is what will make them think of that spacecraft or that space habitat as home.”

This freedom of choice applies even to the tasks that astronauts will perform as well. On a mission like Orion, there is a fairly fixed schedule for what jobs need to be done at what time. But on longer missions like those to the ISS, crew members are given a degree of scheduling freedom. There might be a list of tasks that need to be completed, but the crew can choose in what order they want to approach them — and this sense of autonomy is vital for human well-being more generally.

The whole design of a spacecraft, including everything from its user interfaces to its exterior, contributes to the sense of safety, community, pride, and purpose that astronauts carry with them into their work. “It’s not only for public relations and pretty pictures,” Bannova says. “It’s also for people living in it and using it, and finding the beauty in it.”

With NASA planning to launch four astronauts on Wednesday on its Artemis II mission, the race to return to the Moon is back on. The current mission will see astronauts aboard the Orion capsule travel around the Moon before returning to Earth in 10 days’ time. They’ll be testing out the hardware and systems that could soon see Americans standing on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years in the Artemis IV mission scheduled for 2028. NASA isn’t ready to land people on the Moon just yet, but that’s the aim for the next five years: to not only get people onto the Moon but establish a lengthy human presence on its surface.

That’s NASA’s selling point of Artemis, compared to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s — we won’t just be visiting the Moon for a few days, but rather inhabiting it for a long period of time. Exactly how long is still unclear, but the idea is to build a Moon base that allows astronauts to live on the lunar surface for weeks or even months at a time. 

That makes logistics much more complicated, as astronauts won’t be able to bring all the supplies and resources they would need along with them. Instead, they would need to make use of the limited resources that exist on the Moon, in a process called in-situ resource utilization. Rather than hauling a huge amount of water along for the ride from Earth, for example, we’ll just go and find some ice on the Moon and melt that to use instead. Simple, right?

It’s really not. There’s the science. And there’s the law. 

The Moon’s environment is harsh and inhospitable, with dangerous space radiation, dusty material called regolith that is sharp as glass and destroys equipment, and a different level of gravity to contend with. Though less of a fantasy than the wild Mars colonization plans promised by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, NASA’s aim to establish a base on the Moon by 2030 is still wildly optimistic. Throughout its messaging on Artemis, NASA has emphasized the importance of identifying and extracting resources from the Moon, including water for fuel, helium-3 for energy, and rare earth elements like scandium that are used in electronics. It’s hard to know how abundant these resources are until they’ve been more fully mapped and assessed, but there is at least potential value, as they are required for sustaining habitation on the Moon. And that’s the justification underlying much of Artemis: Resources are needed to support a Moon base, so we need to build a Moon base to search for them.

The agency has even described these efforts as a “lunar gold rush.” But this points to a problem with Artemis that isn’t solvable by developing new technologies: Some experts say that extracting resources from the Moon is a violation of international law.

There isn’t a huge amount of international law that applies to space exploration, but what there is is very clear in one regard: No one owns the Moon. The Outer Space Treaty (which was signed nearly 60 years ago but is still the main basis for international law in space today, if you can believe it) is very explicit regarding the principle of non-appropriation, meaning that nations can’t claim sovereignty over any body in space. But what about extracting resources? There, we get into sticky territory. 

“The US considers that resource extraction is not appropriation,” says Cassandra Steer, space law expert and founder of the Australasian Centre for Space Governance. Many international space lawyers, including Steer, have argued that this is unlawful. “That is an incorrect interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty. You’re trying to carve out a loophole.” After all, if a nation started digging up resources from a territory it didn’t have claim to on Earth these days, that would cause a few legal problems. 

The US has been tactical in its approach to this issue, through the use of an agreement called the Artemis Accords. This is not an international treaty, but rather an agreement signed by over 60 nations about adopting high-level principles regarding space exploration and the Moon in particular. Many of these principles are sound, reasonable approaches to space exploration, covering topics like the sharing of scientific data, consideration of safety and emergency procedures, and adherence to the peaceful use of space.

But the document also includes sections specifically allowing the extraction and use of space resources, saying that this doesn’t conflict with the principle of non-appropriation, and allowing specific nations to establish “safety zones” around areas of their lunar activity where other nations cannot interfere. 

That’s not exactly saying that whoever gets to the Moon first and claims a chunk of it now owns it, but it is implicitly saying that whoever starts activities like research or mining in a certain lunar region now gets to extract resources from that region and other countries can’t stop them. It’s not owning a piece of the Moon, but it is getting priority access to it by drilling, scraping, and occupying a strategic location for its potential value.

It’s hard not to draw a parallel between this approach and the history of land grabs across the American West in the 19th century, especially regarding access to key resources such as water. “I think the Artemis Accords might open the door for these sorts of access claims on the Moon,” says Rebecca Boyle, journalist and author of a book on the topic, Our Moon. “The accords do say that safety zones should be relevant to the activities at hand, but again, I think a creative attorney or a nifty legal argument could lead to a situation where someone who gets to a spot first uses the safety zone rule to lay claim to whatever is there.”

The smart move on the part of the US was integrating the accords into the Artemis program, so countries that wanted to be involved in Artemis had to sign the document. With a handful of key players like Canada, Japan, Australia, the UAE, and the UK signed on, many other countries, including France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and Germany, followed suit.

“And so, it was a bit of a strong-arming of the US to say, if you want in on our program, you have to agree with our international law interpretation. It is forcing what we call opinio juris in international law,” Steer explains. The power of this consensus from so many countries is that, if resource extraction is tolerated in practice, the original intention of the treaty can be in effect overruled by a broadly accepted interpretation.

Steer summed up NASA’s approach bluntly: “You’re just trying to rewrite the treaty, and somehow you’ve convinced 60 countries to do it with you.”

The real elephant in the room of this legal wrangling is China, which did not sign the Artemis Accords and is on course to set its own astronauts on the Moon perhaps even before the US can. China and the US have practically zero relationship when it comes to space activities, but China has been building its own international cooperations for its lunar program, including signing an agreement with Russia and carrying payloads from various European countries and Saudi Arabia on its lunar rovers. China has plans to build its own Moon base with Russia called the International Lunar Research Station, and the US is aggressively pushing its Moon program to try to beat its rivals to the punch. 

“The multi-trillion- dollar question is, why go to the Moon? And it is, to my mind, purely geopolitical,” Steer says. That’s certainly what drove the US during the last space race, when the Cold War was in full swing and racing the Soviet Union to the Moon was not just a matter of political power but also an attempt to demonstrate who had the superior political ideology. Now, in the age of America First Trumpism, the US is attempting to prove its power and capability once again, but the nationalist rhetoric fails to capture the reality of space exploration, which is that it’s now dependent on international partnerships and cross-border cooperation.

Today, it’s not only prestige that is at stake but also access to space resources, from controlling cislunar orbits and lunar locations to controlling the materials required for the Moon’s further exploration, such as ice or helium-3. NASA, after all, has been notably circular in its justifications for Artemis: We need to send astronauts to the Moon to secure access to ice, because we need access to water to support human exploration. There are potential scientific justifications for a Moon mission, from learning about the formation of the Solar System to using the Moon as a base for building a powerful telescope, but these haven’t been well articulated or widely promoted by NASA.

“The real justification, the hidden one, is who gets to have political dominance,” Steer says. “Space is just another domain where geopolitics are playing out. It’s no different from the AI race, it’s no different from competition around other resources, around oil, around water … It’s another domain where the US is grasping at straws to remain the single dominant power, and discovering that actually it can’t.”

The space science community has long prided itself on its ability to inspire and move people of all backgrounds, but President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders demanding the end of diversity programs have thrown that optimism into chaos.

In response, NASA has suspended funding for diversity and outreach programs, paused the meetings of community groups that interface with space scientists, and banned the activities of internal employee resource groups for women, queer people, and others.

The White House additionally moved to terminate thousands of probationary NASA employees before suddenly reversing the decision at the last minute, though the threat of deep layoffs and budget cuts of up to 50 percent continues to hang over the heads of agency workers. NASA has also closed three of its offices this week, including the diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) branch of its equal opportunity office, and laid off its workers. 

Those who remain at NASA are hiding symbols of LGBTQIA pride and removing pronouns from their email signatures. Talented scientists who receive federal funding are in fear not only for their jobs but also for their children’s futures, with many looking for work outside the federal funding structure or even considering leaving the US altogether.

“Executive orders are not optional,” said Charles Webb, acting director of NASA’s planetary science division, at a conference on Monday, describing NASA as “racing to comply” with the orders. 

These changes demanded by the Trump administration are rolling back decades of evidence-supported work in diversity and outreach. Experts warn that these actions will impede scientific discovery; create a smaller, less creative, and more generic agency; and could even lead to more accidents and loss of life as people working on space missions don’t feel that they can speak out about problems that they see.

Taking an axe to diversity programs isn’t making NASA a more efficient agency — it’s undermining the values of science.

The chaos is the point

Those working within NASA are bound by the government’s whims, but the chilling impact of these changes is being felt far beyond civil service.

The legality of Trump’s executive orders is up for debate, leaving individual federal grant recipients grappling with how to handle them. The Verge spoke to nine people working in space science (others declined to speak to the media out of concern for their positions), several of whom described receiving conflicting emails from their university employers on what work is or is not allowed, and on what initiatives are being supported, with guidance changing daily. A general atmosphere of fear and worry is leading many to keep their heads down in hopes that their research may remain unaffected.

Scientists typically look to professional groups for guidance, though most have failed to step up to the plate. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has been widely seen as mishandling its response to the crisis by preemptively deleting content from its website related to diversity and then restoring it after criticism. Other groups like the Space Science Institute (SSI) have also removed pages about a commitment to diversity from its website. Even NASA itself briefly removed mentions of inclusion as one of its core values before reinstating them.

“The removal of a statement (which is just words on a page) does not diminish the commitment of individual researchers and educators in the organization to the idea that diversity in the space science workforce is crucial, and that educational access for all Americans regardless of gender, creed, national origin or other identity breeds innovation and progress in the next generation of scientists,” the SSI said in a statement to The Verge, citing the executive orders as necessitating the change. 

With NASA under threat of deep cuts, universities in damage control mode, and most professional organizations floundering, scientists are having to look outside their typical organizational structures to resist Trump’s executive meddling.

“We’ve not seen the kind of leadership that I think we need, and that tells me that the way to push back on this is largely going to be kind of grassroots. It won’t be coming from the top down. It’ll have to come from the bottom up,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University.

No basis in scientific evidence

A theme that experts repeatedly drew attention to was that the promotion of diversity in the sciences was not a matter of window dressing or checkboxes, but an important pillar of critical thought. While they supported wider access to science for ethical and human reasons, they also emphasized that, in purely pragmatic terms, greater diversity among scientists leads to better science.

Trump’s crusade against diversity in sciences “has no basis in scientific evidence,” according to Julie Rathbun, who works in Cornell University’s astronomy department and has worked as a leader in DEIA programs in the past.

“Scientific evidence for years has said diverse groups do better science,” she says. “Social science tells us diverse and inclusive groups do better science and better technology, and have better outcomes.” 

NASA previously embraced diversity because it was following the evidence, Rathbun says, and it adopted policies that enabled a range of voices in the room to question and challenge each other. That attitude has been largely embraced by space scientists of all backgrounds, who see the practical and ethical values in diversity.

The 1986 Challenger disaster — in which seven crew members were killed when their Space Shuttle broke apart shortly after launch — was directly linked to a homogeneity of thought among NASA personnel. The agency’s lack of diverse perspectives fed into the tendency toward groupthink that contributed to the disaster, while research has shown that more cultural and ethnic diversity in groups leads to more creative and higher quality ideas — and lower risks for space missions.

Diversity initiatives are necessary if the field is to accurately represent the US population, supporters say, noting that they have been making progress toward that goal.

In planetary science, for example, a 2011 demographic survey found that only 25 percent of US researchers were women and just 1 percent were Black or Latinx. There were slight improvements made in the following years, with an increase in a 2020 survey to 35 percent women and 4 percent Latinx researchers, though Black researchers remained distinctly underrepresented with no improvements made in their numbers. The stark lack of Black voices in the field is exactly the kind of issue that DEIA programs hoped to address through outreach and support.

“DEIA is not just lip service. It’s actually trying to make a level playing field,” Byrne says. “And there is a very kind of cold statistical argument behind DEIA that transcends just the moral, which is that we know statistically and scientifically that the more varied a set of perspectives we have, the better the outcome.”

This view was echoed by Mark Sykes, CEO of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), one of the few leaders of a professional group who did send an unambiguous statement of support for diversity. The role of imagination is key for scientific advances, he says, and a more varied group of people can imagine a broader range of possibilities.

“It’s not rocket science,” Sykes says. “A lot of times, it’s just being considerate of everybody.”

An ahistorical departure

This recent slash-and-burn approach by the Trump administration is striking because, traditionally, space science has been beloved on both the left and right. Conservatives have generally been pro-NASA spending, seeing it as a way to burnish the US’ image and to make it a leader in space development as a source of national pride.

That right-wing support for NASA has extended to support for its diversity initiatives, too. Inclusion was added as a core NASA value by then-administrator Jim Bridenstine, a Republican and first-term Trump appointee. Much of the Artemis program’s promotion under Bridenstine’s tenure revolved around the desire to put the first woman and person of color on the moon. Bridenstine also issued a policy statement affirming commitment to equal opportunities within NASA and its partner institutions. That policy statement has now been deleted.

NASA’s interest in diversity is neither new nor a purely left-wing phenomenon. Threatening to gut the agency’s staff and cudgeling its outreach programs is not a return to a traditional conservative approach but rather veering into a crudely “anti-woke” ethos that has no interest in evidence, reality, or history.

An ahistorical departure

In such circumstances, space scientists are finding their own ways to band together and resist. Sykes says he is committed to promoting diversity as a key value of the PSI. If that means federal funding dries up then they will look for other sources of money, perhaps even crowdfunding. He sees outreach and providing input on DEIA topics to be crucial work that they will keep doing, saying, “If NASA wants, or the government wants to go after us for doing that, then, well, the hell with them.” 

For Rathbun, who was active in programs like NASA’s now-suspended Here to Observe initiative that provided outreach for underrepresented students, she says she and her fellow scientists will be continuing their mentoring and support of these students, even if the official program is closed, and inviting them to meetings and workshops to let them know that there are still avenues open to them.

Scientists are even taking it upon themselves to support their colleagues through mutual aid funding. The largely early career researchers who make up the Choir Collaboration, a group dedicated to studying galaxy evolution and promoting intersectionality in science, have started a mutual aid initiative and are collecting financial donations to be distributed to space scientists who have been affected by the cuts, especially those working in DEIA.

For those who are working to diversify science, these efforts are a fundamental duty that scientists have to the broader community. “We view caring and enabling and fostering and uplifting DEIA initiatives, equity, diversity in science, as well as the people who are doing the science, as a part of our job description,” says Choir member Erini Lambrides of NASA Goddard.

Financial pressures are a real concern for early career scientists, for whom a missed paycheck can be an enormous hardship. They described embarking on postdoc positions and having just a few hundred dollars in the bank, or hearing from colleagues who were told with less than a week’s notice that they might not be getting paid that month. No one becomes a space scientist for the money, but neither scientists can’t be expected to do good work when they can’t afford to pay their rent.

That’s particularly true of those who come from marginalized backgrounds or who work in DEIA initiatives, which are often unfunded and are frequently considered by employers as not as worthwhile work for a scientist as, say, producing a highly cited paper.

That devaluing of outreach work by prospective employers overlooks the human aspect that powers all of science. “Science is never done in isolation, right?” says Choir member Taylor Hutchison, also of NASA Goddard. “We’re people first. And we’re part of communities.”

That sense of community has also powered the mutual aid initiative, which has been taken up and supported by scientists at all career stages. It has spread even beyond the US, reflecting the global nature of the field and an increasing push against astronomy’s imperialist roots and its centering of the Global North.

“The response has been fantastic,” said choir member Gourav Khullar of the University of Washington. “And we’re engaging with the broader astronomy community even outside North America, which is very representative of what the astronomy field is.”

An attack on science

Researchers working outside of federal agencies expressed sympathy for those working within NASA. Federal workers have little freedom to challenge executive orders or to stand up to the government, even in self defense.

“Government employees are not the enemy,” Rathbun said. “They do really good work, especially people at NASA.”

There is a sense that workers at NASA and other federal agencies are being thrown under the bus in the name of a culture war, with their work being denigrated in a way that they don’t have the ability to refute.

“Every time you talk to someone who actually works with career civil servants, you realize that overwhelmingly, they’re super motivated, well-meaning, passionate people,” said Byrne. “These are not bad people. There’s no deep state. These are people who care about their country and the planet and their species, and want to help.”

While few would argue that there are some areas in which NASA could curtail its spending and reduce costs, such as the ever-ballooning pork barrel buffet that is the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, the nixing of DEIA values is neither efficient nor supported by the evidence.

It’s the partisan nature of these orders that have people worried, as they undermine the structures that are especially necessary at the cutting edge of scientific thought.

“Many of us work in fields where we’re trying to challenge and break existing paradigms within our science,” Lambrides says. “And in order to really test and break those paradigms, you do need diversity of thought. You do need people coming from different frameworks of life, and how they solve and how they think about problems. Because these are brand new problems we’re working on.”

This isn’t the first time that scientists have seen their work disregarded, and researchers see a clear through-line in right wing attacks on scientific principles. 

“If you look at these executive orders in total, it’s an attack on science as a whole,” Rathbun says. “An attack on DEIA is the same as an attack on vaccines, the same as an attack on climate change. It’s an attack on the process. It’s not letting us fulfill that scientific goal of getting our best understanding of the universe.”