Congress is on recess. The government is five weeks from a possible shutdown. In the middle of that, the U.S. Space Force is quietly on track for the biggest budget increase any military service has received in 75 years.
That’s the headline from Sam Wilson’s new Aerospace Corporation report, “FY 2027 Defense Space Budget: Dramatic and Targeted Growth”, but how that money is slated to be spent is the focus of this week’s episode.
“ I think it's remarkable that 75% of the proposed increase is just in a few different capability areas between classified activities, missile warning, missile track, moving target indication, and command and control. I, I think you would expect for a service if they have this massive increase for everything to go up, right?” — Sam Wilson
I want to remind you that the Trump Administration’s 2027 Department of Defense budget request amounts to a top line of roughly $1.45 trillion, a 44% increase over the $1.01 trillion enacted for FY2026. The Space Force portion of that ask — $71.3 billion — represents just under 5%.
The Numbers
The Space Force’s FY2027 request is a 120% jump from FY2026’s enacted $32 billion ($26.1B base plus $5.9 billion in reconciliation). Wilson’s math: this year’s request breaks down as $59.2 billion in the base budget and $12.1 billion through reconciliation, and if Congress agrees both pieces will more than double year over year. It could be the largest percentage increase for any military service since 1952.
Golden Dome Programs Rebranded
Back in April, Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), called the Space Force budget request “a protein shake” on our April 24 episode. Four months later, the metaphor holds up because some of the biggest budgetary ingredients started out as somebody else’s recipe.
“This budget's like a protein shake. It's got peanut butter and everything in it.” — Todd Harrison
The administration initiated Space-Based Air-Moving Target Indication and the Space Data Network in FY2026 inside the Golden Dome programs portfolio. In FY2027, they’ve been renamed “Space Superiority” initiatives and seemingly copied and pasted into the Space Force budget. Wilson’s read: “It’s not just getting budget tied to Golden Dome, it’s getting budget that it gets to control.”
The Certain Uncertainty Of a Continuing Resolution
The U.S. Congress has failed to pass a complete federal budget on time for three decades. The last time a defense appropriations bill passed before the September 30th deadline was the FY2019 budget in 2018, which “was the first time in a decade the military received funding on time,” wrote Ben Werner of USNI News.
This year is an election year. While no one I know expects an enacted budget to be in place by the beginning of the fiscal year — which starts October 1 — even a continuing resolution is iffy. Both chambers will not take up the task of reconciling their versions of a continuing resolution into one bill until they are both back on Capitol Hill, which isn’t until September 14 — roughly two and a half weeks before the government runs out of money.
Even if a continuing resolution is passed before the deadline, it’s unclear how legislators will treat the non-discretionary — read irregular — $5.9 billion the Space Force received from last year’s budget reconciliation bill.
Ukraine gave Russia’s rocket industry its own version of budgetary uncertainty on August 15, minus the paperwork:
A New Launch Policy, Signed August 20
Trump signed a new National Space Transportation Policy presidential memorandum on August 20, replacing a 2013 Obama-era directive that hadn’t been touched in 13 years. Almost every headline I have read came from this line: “By 2030, our space transportation ranges must grow to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries every year.”
The most important part of that opening was the previous line: “The United States must establish and maintain space transportation capabilities that ensure access to the full range of orbital regimes relevant to United States interests, from suborbital and very-low Earth orbit altitudes to the lunar surface, Lagrange points, and deep space.”
When I return from a short break, retired Space Force Lt. Gen. John Shaw and I will be discussing what this memorandum could mean for space power for the next episode of The DownLink Podcast.
GAO’s Report Card for NASA
Every year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sends the sitting NASA administrator a very polite, very formal letter that functions as a permanent record note. This year’s version, drafted August 12, points out that NASA hasn’t closed out a single one of GAO’s priority recommendations. The agency has 46 open items in total, three of them were specifically flagged within the letter. The GAO also claims that the cost estimate for Artemis III that it first requested back in 2019, has yet to be received.
Three areas GAO flagged in the letter:
Monitoring program costs — no life-cycle cost estimate yet for Artemis III, a recommendation GAO first made in 2019, even as the mission targets a 2028 lunar landing.
Managing cybersecurity risks — NASA still hasn’t completed an organization-wide cybersecurity risk assessment.
Using federal contracting metrics — a 2021 recommendation to adopt outcome-oriented procurement metrics remains open.
Dolly Parton — January 19, 1946 - August 25, 2026
Dolly Parton died Tuesday in Nashville at age 80 after losing her battle with cancer, according to her publicist, Marcel Pariseau. Parton had spoken publicly in recent months about the onset of health issues following the loss of her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, in March 2025.
Her catalog wasn’t built on space themes, but her work touched upon the domain in her own way. Most recently in 2022, she appeared as a hologram of herself on Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi series The Orville, performing “Try” for a Moclan superfan inside the ship’s environmental simulator.
Parton’s space-related songs:
“The Moon, the Stars and Me” — B-side to her 1990 single “White Limozeen”
“After the Gold Rush” — Neil Young cover recorded with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt on 1999’s Trio II, later performed at the 2019 Grammys with Maren Morris; its final verse imagines spaceships evacuating Earth
“From Here to the Moon and Back” — originally recorded with Kris Kristofferson for the Joyful Noise soundtrack, 2012; re-recorded with Willie Nelson in 2013, and again on her own 2014 album Blue Smoke
“Try” — from Blue Smoke, 2014; performed as a hologram of herself on The Orville: New Horizons, Season 3, Episode 8, “Midnight Blue” (2022)
Reading and Watching
China
"China Abruptly Postpones Ambitious Chang'e-7 Lunar Mission Launch" — The Associated Press, AP News, August 23, 2026
“Long March 12 Launches Despite Recent 7A Failure, Long March 2C Launches Satellite for UAE” — Andrew Jones, SpaceNews, August 17, 2026
“The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China’s space program” — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, August 18, 2026
“New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2026” — New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, August 2026
Russia / Ukraine
“Ukrainian Missiles Strike Russian Soyuz Rocket Factory” — Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com, August 15, 2026
“Zelensky Confirms Flamingo Missile Strikes Deep in Russian Territory” — Kyiv Post staff, Kyiv Post, August 15, 2026
United States
“Isaacman ‘Extremely Confident’ Artemis III Will Launch in 2027” — Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com, August 14, 2026
“Invited media, military members held at gunpoint by Space Force security” — Ellen Mitchell, The Hill, August 20, 2026
"SpaceX Launches New Era of Commercial Spaceflight with $100 Billion Louisiana Campus" — Louisiana Economic Development, August 25, 2026
Ad Astra! Laura
AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT: The episode transcript text was produced using automated speech recognition. Technical terminology may contain inaccuracies. This is provided for accessibility and is not a verbatim record. Please refer to audio for the definitive version.
