# SPACE Act of 2026 policy and implementation analysis

True Tomorrow Foundation · September 27, 2026

Advance the Act’s public-science and stewardship agenda while treating the finance model, agency readiness, rights enforcement, and statutory crosswalk as conditions for introduction-ready legislation. The Foundation’s role is research, public-interest standards, education, and convening; this publication establishes no federal authority or funded Foundation program.

Foundation policy analysis dated September 27, 2026. No official counsel authorship, congressional introduction, enactment, agency endorsement, or CBO/JCT score is established. Numerical scenarios are reproducible illustrations in FY2025 dollars, not forecasts.

## The proposal

31 titles, 282 operative sections, and ten annexes. Section counts exclude annex model laws and contents entries. The public packet streamlines nonoperative cover material; all legislative provisions and substantive annex content are preserved.

## Policy mechanisms

### Protect the capacity to discover
Titles II, VI–IX
Set separate NASA and DARPA floors at three times their real FY2025 planning baselines. Connect mission-led research with a $25 billion Frontier Science Network and investigator-led basic science.
Agency baselines require certification; a funding floor is not a guarantee of mission output.

### Build the places science needs
Titles V, XI–XIX
Coordinate laboratories, common user facilities, computing, launch infrastructure, and the systems needed for Earth science and exploration. The illustrative infrastructure account is $15 billion a year.
Facilities need lifecycle budgets, skilled operators, safety review, and evidence of usable capacity.

### Make room for the long horizon
Title X; Titles XXIX–XXX
Support ambitious experiments and preserve knowledge across generations. A $5 billion far-horizon allocation sits within the $10 billion Grand Challenges envelope.
Independent replication and measured milestones govern expansion; speculative concepts still need testable evidence.

### Invest in people and public return
Titles XX–XXIV, XXVII
Connect scientific careers, apprenticeships, education, talent mobility, procurement, and technology transition. The workforce and education planning account is $10 billion a year.
Personnel and immigration changes need operative statutory language, and public-return terms need clear rights and responsibilities.

### Keep knowledge open and power accountable
Titles III, XXV–XXVI, XXIX
Pair scientific independence and publication protections with research security, safety, civil liberties, open data, and public oversight.
Safeguards need named decision-makers, evidence standards, deadlines, and workable review routes.

### Cooperate across borders and generations
Titles IV, XXVIII–XXX; Annexes A–B
Propose shared international projects, a model convention, and a national implementation framework. A reserve and long-run endowment target aim to support institutional continuity.
International participation requires state consent; reserve and endowment targets require actual capital accumulation.

## Fiscal calculations

### A connected science system
Protected NASA and DARPA planning floors sit alongside a Frontier Science Network, a capital-delivery authority, long-horizon research, and a model international convention. Publication, safety, and continuity provisions connect scientific ambition to public responsibilities.

### Delivery before expansion
Staffing, contracting, launch facilities, test capacity, power, and supply chains determine how much new funding can be used well. The 75% first funding step and subsequent 42.9% step require execution plans; greater budget authority alone cannot triple mission output.

### Finance remains unresolved
The $154.874 billion annual envelope adds correctly, but it is an illustrative program total. A $217.185 billion reserve and $7.7437 trillion endowment target require separate accumulation. No official score establishes revenue sufficiency or deficit neutrality.

### Drafting before introduction
Specify appropriations and transfer mechanics, the tax base and collection rules, corporate-board appointments, immigration categories, safety jurisdiction, and enforceable review procedures. Make data-minimization duties, impoundment safeguards, and inventor and laboratory royalty rights explicit.

Annual envelope: $154.874B. Protected core: $86.874B. Reserve: $217.185B. Endowment: $7.7437T. 105% operating coverage: $162.618B.

The protected reserve would cover 16.83 months of the full envelope. At the 25x endowment payout threshold the 2% ceiling supplies $77.437B, half the desired annual distribution. A 30% capital loss makes a payout based on the pre-shock average equal 2.86% of current assets.

The annual envelope is $125.916B above a flat FY2025 NASA and DARPA comparator. This is not a net federal cost estimate. Reconcile existing appropriations, transfers and overlapping programs first.

Years from FY2027 | Full envelope arithmetic B | Agency ramp with other accounts fully funded B | Analyst phased example B
--- | --- | --- | ---
5 | 774.3700 | 723.6935 | 672.6935
10 | 1548.7400 | 1498.0635 | 1447.0635
30 | 4646.2200 | 4595.5435 | 4544.5435

The source 500-year multiplication is $77.437T; it is not a forecast. The other-account 50%/75%/100% ramp is an explicit analyst assumption. The annual CSV gives 2%, 3% and 4% hypothetical nominal inflation paths using year minus 2025 as the exponent. Authority is not outlays.

Reserve construction over ten years requires $21.7185B annually without interest or withdrawals. Operations plus that reserve contribution plus $50B endowment capitalization require $226.5925B before the coverage margin and other costs. These financial stocks must not be described as already funded.

Agency ramp growth is 75%, 42.86% and 20%. A $15B facilities budget with 20% higher unit costs buys $12.5B of planned-price capacity; preserving scope costs $18B. Neither the ramp nor this sensitivity predicts delivered output.

Tax cash formula: effective base in trillions x 1000 x rate percent / 100 + other receipts in billions. At 0.04% and no other receipts, $406.54425T of effective annual taxable transactions is required for the 105% operating-coverage hurdle. This is a break-even calculation, not an estimate of the actual taxable base. Gross receipts exclude income/payroll offsets, collection timing and administration. Do not linearly scale CBO’s different tax option.

Twelve 0.005 percentage-point steps take a rate from 0.04% to 0.10%. Rate adjustment does not guarantee revenue adequacy. Enactment on September 27, 2026 would make January 1, 2028 the earliest tax start under the at-least-180-days rule; the FY2027 ramp needs startup financing or a revised clock.

Endowment formula: P(n)=C*((1+r)^n-1)/r, or C*n when r=0. Assume zero starting capital after reserve funding, end-year contributions, constant net real return after fees, and no payouts while accumulating.

Contribution B | Return | Whole years to target | Principal at year 50 B
--- | --- | --- | ---
25 | 0% | 310 | 1250.000
25 | 2% | 100 | 2114.485
25 | 4% | 67 | 3816.677
50 | 0% | 155 | 2500.000
50 | 2% | 72 | 4228.970
50 | 4% | 51 | 7633.354
100 | 0% | 78 | 5000.000
100 | 2% | 48 | 8457.940
100 | 4% | 36 | 15266.708

## Verified evidence and qualifications

### NASA’s baseline is supported
The FY2025 Agency Financial Report identifies $24.838 billion in discretionary appropriations. The draft appropriately distinguishes that recurring planning base from disaster and mandatory amounts. Multiplying by three gives $74.514 billion.
[NASA FY2025 Agency Financial Report](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/fy25-afr-final-tagged.pdf)

### DARPA’s planning figure needs reconciliation
DARPA’s April 2026 FY2027 justification book reports a FY2025 discretionary spend plan of $4.408991 billion (printed page xix), above the draft’s $4.120 billion. A spend plan is not automatically the bill’s certified enacted baseline. If that larger figure were certified, the agency floor would rise by $866.973 million and the whole envelope to $155.740973 billion. Preserve the draft figure pending the section 207 reconciliation.
[DARPA FY2027 justification book, executive summary page xix](https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2027/budget_justification/pdfs/03_RDT_and_E/RDTE_Vol1_DARPA_MasterJustificationBook_PB_2027.pdf)

### Physical and workforce constraints are real
NASA OIG’s June 2026 assessment says Kennedy and Wallops could approach capacity in 2028–2029. GAO’s July 2026 review reports staffing effects on 25 of 36 major projects following NASA’s 2025 workforce reduction. These findings support capacity planning; they do not establish how quickly the proposed expansion could be delivered.
[NASA OIG launch infrastructure assessment, June 22, 2026](https://oig.nasa.gov/news/nasas-aging-launch-infrastructure-faces-capacity-limits-amid-growing-mission-demands/) · [GAO NASA major projects review, July 23, 2026](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108556)

### The transaction-tax benchmark is not a score
CBO’s December 2024 option uses a 0.01% rate and reports $296.8 billion in net deficit reduction over 2025–2034, with income and payroll tax offsets and early timing effects. It is neither gross cash receipts nor a score of this bill. Multiplying that amount by four cannot establish that a 0.04% tax funds the SPACE envelope.
[CBO financial-transactions tax option, December 12, 2024](https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/60966)

### Correct the buyback citation before legislative use
The cited August 2026 CBO report records nearly $9 billion in corporate stock-repurchase tax receipts in 2025. Its accessible text does not establish the source annex’s claimed $9 billion annual forward average. More fundamentally, collections under the existing 1% tax do not score the proposed additional percentage point. The model therefore leaves other dedicated receipts as an explicit assumption.
[CBO Federal Excise Tax Revenues, August 2026](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62631) · [IRS instructions for Form 7208](https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i7208)

### Distinct research institutions need distinct management
NCSES reports that the federal government funded 40% of U.S. basic research in 2024. DARPA describes program managers serving typically less than five years. These support complementary investigator-led and mission-led pathways, rather than applying one management model to every scientific discipline.
[NCSES State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2026](https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsbsep20261/overview) · [DARPA program manager operating model](https://www.darpa.mil/about/program-managers)

### Openness and security can share a framework
NIST’s November 2025 framework supports mission-focused, risk-balanced research security alongside international collaboration. The bill’s nationality-alone prohibition, appeals, and publication protections fit that direction; implementation still needs named decision-makers, evidence standards, and deadlines.
[NIST research security framework, November 2025](https://www.nist.gov/publications/safeguarding-international-science-research-security-framework-0)

### International models inform design, not legal adoption
ESA’s mandatory programs use economic-capacity contributions alongside optional programs. The SPACE model adapts that structure. Existing space-treaty duties still need a project-level crosswalk for authorization and supervision, liability, nonappropriation, and harmful interference. Publishing a model convention does not secure state consent.
[European Space Agency funding model](https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Funding) · [United Nations Outer Space Treaty](https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html?stream=science)

## Drafting and legal findings

### Reconcile the spending promises and available money
§§201–205, 210, 401, 406, 3102 · Before introduction
Sections 201–202 state funding floors, but section 401 appropriates deposited amounts and section 406 permits conditional reductions. Decide which annual appropriations satisfy the floors, how Fund transfers reach agency accounts, whether the full envelope or only incremental expansion is financed by new receipts, and how existing appropriations are protected without paying the same activity twice. A fund balance is not a new tax receipt and a reserve draw is not deficit-neutral revenue.

### Replace illustrative authority with operative allocations
§§203–205, 1003; introductory fiscal table · Before introduction
The phrase illustrative steady-state minimum blurs a legal minimum and a planning example. The $10B Grand Challenges, $5B international, and $3B safety/data envelope lines lack an equally clear consolidated annual allocation schedule in the bill. Define mandatory and discretionary accounts, phased amounts, administrative costs, and boundaries. Count the $5B far-horizon requirement inside Grand Challenges. The 20% basic-research and replication requirements are shares, not extra appropriations.

### Complete the tax code and automatic trigger
§§403–406, 3103 · Before introduction
Specify taxpayer and collection agent, territorial nexus, derivatives valuation, taxable event, anti-cascading rules, exemptions, refunds, penalties, administration, and Internal Revenue Code amendments. Define the forward resource-coverage ratio, forecast method, reserve treatment, publication date, and appeals. A half-basis-point annual rate step cannot promptly cover a sudden large shortfall. Define interim cash authority and the temporary floor-reduction process rather than assuming the cap generates enough money.

### Fund the startup period
§§201–202, 403, 408, 3002–3004, 3110 · Before introduction
A January 1 tax start at least 180 days after enactment can occur after the FY2027 ramp begins. For example, enactment on September 27, 2026 makes the earliest qualifying tax start January 1, 2028. Existing appropriations, a startup appropriation, an explicitly authorized transfer, or a revised funding clock would be needed; no startup reserve may be assumed. Align fiscal-year deadlines with enactment timing and rulemaking lead times.

### Define endowment governance and payout accounting
§§407–411 · Before introduction
Specify investment limits, custody, valuation, fees, voting rules, public audit, liquidity, loss recognition, and nominal-to-real conversion. A trailing 20-quarter average can exceed current market value after a crash. At the 25× entry threshold, a 2% payout funds only half of the target annual distribution. Set stress rules and the source of the other half. Capital transfers and asset purchases need unified-budget treatment, separate from program outlays.

### Complete appointments and corporate powers
§§304, 409, 501–502, 1001 · Counsel review
The infrastructure board’s two presidential appointees lack express confirmation, supervision, removal, vacancy, and term rules. Determine whether each role is a principal officer, inferior officer, or adviser; match appointment methods to its actual powers. Specify the corporation’s chief executive, procurement and personnel regime, property powers, audit jurisdiction, and claims process. Advisory scientific councils should remain advisory as the draft provides.

### Write the immigration and personnel amendments
Titles XX–XXII · Counsel review
A new visa and immigrant category need Immigration and Nationality Act amendments, numerical rules, eligibility, duration, sponsoring authority, status adjustment, portability, dependent status, and work authorization. The personnel system needs explicit Title 5 exceptions and treatment of merit principles, labor relations, pay limits, appeals, and retirement. General savings clauses do not settle these details.

### Make rights protection enforceable
§§303–306, 2501–2504, 2601–2613, 3104–3107 · Counsel review
Identify who investigates retaliation, orders corrective action, resolves publication appeals, and reviews security designations; specify deadlines and review routes. The no-implied-private-right clause means a safeguard is not automatically a new damages remedy. Specify personal-data minimization, retention, and purpose limits, and reconcile spending protections with existing impoundment law.

### Allocate mission and safety jurisdiction
Titles XI–XIX, XXIII, XXVI · Before deployment of programs
Crosswalk NASA, FAA, FCC, NOAA, DOE, defense, environmental, and relevant nuclear authorities. Identify the lead regulator for launch, spectrum, remote sensing, orbital servicing, nuclear systems, and sample return. A general research authorization is not an operating license. Define responsibility for shared infrastructure, incident reporting, insurance, indemnity, debris, and end-of-life liabilities.

### Finish the treaty rather than treating it as adopted
Title XXVIII; Annex A · Before negotiation mandate is finalized
Supply depositary, authentic languages, signature, ratification, entry-into-force threshold, accession, reservations, legal seat, contribution ceilings, voting thresholds, immunity boundaries, sanctions, dispute rules, and withdrawal accounting. Reconcile the two-year withdrawal notice with outstanding capital and cleanup duties. Preserve applicable treaty and implementing-law processes.

### Close procurement, IP, and credit gaps
§§2303–2309, 2404–2408 · Before introduction
Reconcile the $2M simplified-award path with $5M concept grants, and specify research other-transaction eligibility, follow-on authority, audits, protests, and government data rights. Loans and guarantees need credit-subsidy appropriations and commitment limits. Public-return and royalty terms require an explicit crosswalk to existing inventor and laboratory distributions.

### Measure distributional effects without invented benefits
§§2701–2710, 2910; Annex I · Independent evaluation
Assess trading costs and asset-price effects for pension and retirement savers, concentration among contractors, wage competition with universities and firms, housing pressure near facilities, and access for small institutions and lower-resource partners. No supplied evidence supports a net jobs, GDP multiplier, emissions reduction, or benefit-cost estimate for the whole package. Define comparators and collect evidence before making those claims.

## Engineering evidence gates

System | Evidence | Gate | Reference
--- | --- | --- | ---
Launch sites and common facilities | Independent capacity model covering pad occupancy, turnaround, weather, range and airspace coordination, utilities, and simultaneous operations | Demonstrated throughput and recovery margin under realistic demand; funded maintenance and local mitigation | §§204, 506, 603
Crewed deep-space systems | Architecture-level mass, power, thermal, radiation, life-support, logistics, communications, and return/abort budgets | Integrated tests, independent mission-readiness review, closed critical hazards, and affordable lifecycle support | §§605–606, 1103, 1106
Compute and autonomous laboratories | Measured compute utilization, grid and water demand, cybersecurity, reproducibility, and scientific bottlenecks | Demonstrated scientific value and independent safety evaluation before consequential deployment | §§1401–1408, 2606
Propulsion and speculative physics | Falsifiable hypothesis and instrumented experiment with calibrated uncertainty and an energy/momentum accounting | Independent replication before demonstration scale; no presumption that an extraordinary concept works | §§1002–1004, 1901–1904
Earth observation and hazard systems | Calibration overlap, latency, uncertainty, availability, archive and operational handoff requirements | Validated warning performance and continuity through sensor retirement or supplier failure | §§1701–1705, 1802–1805
People and acquisition | Skills inventory, time-to-hire, contracting capacity, training completion, and supplier readiness | Budget growth released through staffed and independently reviewed portfolios rather than project-count targets | §§211, 602, 2008–2010, 2307

No mission-specific feasibility result is asserted without architecture, mass, power, reliability, cost, trajectory and validation data. No net jobs, GDP, return-on-investment or emissions forecast is available for the whole bill.

## Foundation relevance

### An orbital commons
§§1101, 1105–1108, 1902, 1906
Connect the Foundation’s orbital-safety work to open interface specifications, public risk ledgers, debris and contamination duties, and lifecycle responsibility. The bill advances shared systems but still needs explicit operator obligations and regulatory coordination.

### Science that serves Earth
Titles XVI–XVIII, XXV
Use Earth observations, hazard warning, closed-loop systems, and open data as public-interest research themes. Evaluate whether communities can use the outputs, with measures for access, reliability, and decision value rather than launch or publication counts alone.

### More people able to participate
§§505, 901–903; Titles XX–XXII
Develop prospective apprenticeship, teacher, and shared-facility access models with community colleges and small research organizations. Philanthropy could support early feasibility work, reproducibility, public data tools, and independent evaluation. These are proposed roles, not announced grants or partnerships.

### Peaceful cooperation and future generations
Titles XXVI, XXVIII–XXX
Convene discussion of contribution formulas, reciprocal access, scientific mobility, archives, and withdrawal duties. Keep civilian public-benefit work distinct from DARPA’s defense mission and conditioned on rights, export, and security safeguards.

## Implementation

Stage | Lead | Work
--- | --- | ---
Before introduction | Legislative counsel; tax and budget staff; agencies | Resolve the account ledger, certified baseline, startup finance, tax code, officer appointments, visa categories, and statutory crosswalk; commission official CBO/JCT scoring.
Enactment to 90 days | OMB; NASA; defense comptroller; Treasury; OPM | Certify baselines; inventory skills and critical facilities; identify startup cash and appoint responsible officials. GAO review follows the certification timetable.
First year | Agencies; Treasury; infrastructure and network bodies | Publish readiness plans, tax rules, public reporting definitions, privacy and safety procedures; start limited award and apprenticeship pilots. Do not assume tax receipts have begun.
FY2027 to FY2029 | Congress; OMB; NASA; DARPA | Source multipliers are 1.75×, 2.50×, and 3×. Rebase this clock if enactment timing makes it impracticable. Tie actual obligations to legal resources and demonstrated execution capacity.
Years four to ten | Agency program leads; Fund Board; independent reviewers | Expand validated facilities and portfolios; build the reserve before the endowment; review competition, workforce, lifecycle costs, access, and measurable public value.
Beyond ten years | Existing institutions; Congress; international partners | Transfer temporary-office duties, audit sustainability, refresh five-year reviews, and preserve 25- to 500-year scenario planning as adaptive stewardship.

## Modeling assumptions

- Source NASA baseline 24.838 and uncertified DARPA planning baseline 4.120.

- Source agency ramp 1.75x in FY2027, 2.50x in FY2028, then 3x.

- Analyst assumption: other 68B envelope phases 50%, 75%, then 100%; source does not specify a complete ramp.

- Authority is not obligations or outlays. Tables exclude reserve/endowment accumulation and credit subsidies.

- The incremental comparator is flat FY2025 NASA and DARPA only, not an official current-law baseline.

- Nominal examples assume constant inflation since FY2025; no actual GDP price-index series is represented.

- Revenue uses a hypothetical effective taxable base after avoidance and trading response. No empirical base or elasticity is estimated.

- Revenue excludes indirect income/payroll offsets, administration and timing effects; gross cash coverage is not federal deficit neutrality.

- Endowment scenarios begin after the reserve is funded, at zero principal, with end-year contributions and no payouts during accumulation.

- Net real returns are deterministic assumptions after expenses, not forecasts or guarantees; no likelihood is assigned.

## Primary source register

- [NASA FY2025 Agency Financial Report](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/fy25-afr-final-tagged.pdf) — Discretionary baseline; additional funding categories are distinct.

- [DARPA FY2027 justification book, executive summary page xix](https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2027/budget_justification/pdfs/03_RDT_and_E/RDTE_Vol1_DARPA_MasterJustificationBook_PB_2027.pdf) — FY2025 spend plan $4.408991B; requires reconciliation to the statutory certification definition.

- [NASA OIG launch infrastructure assessment, June 22, 2026](https://oig.nasa.gov/news/nasas-aging-launch-infrastructure-faces-capacity-limits-amid-growing-mission-demands/) — Conditional 2028–2029 capacity finding.

- [GAO NASA major projects review, July 23, 2026](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108556) — Workforce and project-management evidence; no estimate of SPACE outcomes.

- [CBO financial-transactions tax option, December 12, 2024](https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/60966) — A different policy at 0.01%; net budget effects include other-tax offsets.

- [CBO Federal Excise Tax Revenues, August 2026](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62631) — Historical 2025 buyback receipts; not a score of the additional contribution.

- [IRS instructions for Form 7208](https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i7208) — Existing 1% stock-repurchase tax and administration.

- [NCSES State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2026](https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsbsep20261/overview) — Basic-research funding context.

- [DARPA program manager operating model](https://www.darpa.mil/about/program-managers) — Milestone leadership and short appointments.

- [NIST research security framework, November 2025](https://www.nist.gov/publications/safeguarding-international-science-research-security-framework-0) — Risk-balanced international research guidance.

- [European Space Agency funding model](https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Funding) — Mandatory and optional contribution structures.

- [United Nations Outer Space Treaty](https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html?stream=science) — Existing treaty principles; project-level legal review remains necessary.

- [Constitution Annotated on principal and inferior officers](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3-11-1/ALDE_00013101/) — Appointment method must match statutory powers and supervision.

- [GAO Principles of Federal Appropriations Law](https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law/red-book) — Appropriations-law reference for counsel; not an opinion on this draft.

## Source integrity

Public DOCX SHA-256: d32f56d3dfbadef3e641f4e6fd26b2bd28b25a773a2d30ef3414d72ddd554837. All legislative provisions and substantive annex content are preserved in order. The cover and introductory editorial material have been streamlined. Source statements are not verified findings by default.