[aggie]

I'm not sure why you think space exploration is a progressive issue. It's fairly non-partisan. To figure out who supports space you can mostly just look at who has the contractors or NASA center in their district.

There are aspects of NASA that are more partisan, namely the planetary sciences (which, lately, many conservatives dismiss as agenda-driven climate change science). But there is also overlapping support for funding NASA and DOD/DARPA, which you certainly wouldn't consider progressive causes.

There's also no reason to think it will be 'thrown in the garbage'. NASA funding isn't what it was during the the unique political environment of the space race, but it's funding has been fairly steady since the mid-70s. Again, a steady level with no inflections due to partisan control of government.

The bigger problem is mission-specific funding uncertainty, as many of the missions NASA would like to run take 10 years or more -- too long for politicians to benefit from successes, so there is less individual incentive to fund an ambitious challenge like sending humans to Mars.

[astrodust]

I don't think you understand how anti-science the current Republican movement is. The problem is that science often disagrees with these foregone conclusions that the party comes up with and ends up being an obstacle to their goals.

As they say, when you're a hard right-wing person reality has a left-wing bias.