The Trump administration has proposed ending direct U.S. funding of the International Space Station by 2025, and that's a mistake. Its budget for NASA calls for $150 million next year to begin seeding commercial investments that could develop capabilities that the space station could rely on in the future, when federal funds runs out.

Shifting America's involvement in the space station toward private enterprises isn't by itself unwelcome. Texas has emerged as a key center for a growing industry that promises to bring commercial applications to space exploration more quickly than NASA has been able to in the past. That's an exciting frontier that should be supported.

But it's important that Washington not pull the plug on the public investment in the space station until a commercial space industry has matured sufficiently to provide the station the support it will require. Proposing a budget that ends funding for the space station by 2025 is reckless.

The space station is managed in Texas at the Johnson Space Center, and is one of the more remarkable feats of engineering, science and international cooperation the world has to show. Just this week, three new astronauts arrived and three departed the station. Two NASA engineers are training in Russia now, preparing to join the crew this month.

The budget proposal would put its continued success in question, as the development of commercial enterprises capable of serving the space station remains a speculative enterprise. How soon, and to what degree, private firms will be able to take over from the veteran astronauts and others at the Johnson Space Center remains unclear.

That's why we were relieved to find that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, joined with a Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, to urge the administration to reverse itself.

Cruz and Nelson, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate's subcommittee on space, wrote a letter last week urging that the U.S. continue to support the International Space Station until viable alternatives emerge, rather than to announce in advance that the funding will end and hope that the space station will find a capable partner.

"The future of ISS should be determined by the emergence of a viable and proven commercial alternative and the needs of our national space program," the senators wrote.

The space station is important to Texas, of course. But it is also a unique collaboration between many nations seeking to better understand space. The potential for commercial exploration of space — which someday may include everything from space tourism to commercial asteroid mining — is enormous.

The administration is smart to support those efforts. But the continued involvement of NASA is also essential, at least until commercial entities prove willing and capable to pick up the work that NASA has led for so long.

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