The White House hosted a summit, “Science: A New Golden Age”, on Oct. 8 and announced what it called “the most ambitious set of science initiatives this century,” totalling some $6 billion in commitments across government, industry, universities, and philanthropy. Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios called it “the most transformative day for the American scientific enterprise since the reshaping of the Federal research ecosystem following World War II.” President Trump used the occasion to award National Medals of Science to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su, and Medals of Technology to Michael Dell and Satya Nadella.

Some of the plans are physical. NASA and the Energy Department signed an agreement to design, build, and fly space nuclear power systems: Space Reactor-1, a fission-powered spacecraft bound for Mars, which the White House claims is “expected to launch in 2028,” and Lunar Reactor-1 is to be the first fission reactor on the Moon. The National Science Foundation has revived its Young Scholars Program for students in grades 3 through 12 chosen for demonstrated mathematical ability, and will fund a six-year bachelor’s-to-PhD track; the Energy Department offers a $100 million fellowship for four-year PhDs with research embedded in national laboratories and industry, and high-school research fellowships at the labs. Kratsios cited the National Academies’ finding that researchers spend “as much as 45% of their time” on administrative tasks, and promised to cut it. The fusion roadmap, he said, “has set a goal of commercial fusion activity by mid 2030s.”