Donald Trump wants you to take a hard look at America's space program

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump runs a little hot and cold on the U.S. space program.

During his Reddit AMA last week, Trump extolled the virtues of NASA, saying that he thinks the space agency is "wonderful" and that "America has always led the world in space exploration."

On Wednesday, however, Trump sang a different tune.

"Look at your space program. Look at what’s going on there," Trump said at a town hall event in Daytona Beach, Florida. 

"Somebody just asked me back stage, ‘Mr. Trump, will you get involved in the space program?' Look what’s happened with your employment. Look what’s happened with our whole history of space and leadership. Look what’s going on folks. We’re like a third-world nation."

It's telling that Trump was asked about the space program in Florida.

The state was hit hard by layoffs after the end of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011. In total, about 8,000 people were laid off from jobs at Cape Canaveral's Kennedy Space Center after the shuttle program was scrapped.

The issue of U.S. supremacy in space has taken a more front-and-center position for the Trump campaign in recent months, starting at the Republican National Convention in July.

Retired NASA astronaut Eileen Collins spoke during the convention about how NASA has slipped in space exploration since the end of the Apollo program and the space shuttle program.

“Nations that lead on the frontier, lead in the world,” Collins said during her speech. “We need that visionary leadership again. Leadership that will inspire the next generation to have that same passion.”

That kind of "NASA is losing in space" narrative fits nicely into Trump's overall message that America is in decline. However, it disregards some key facts about NASA today.

NASA is still in the business of space exploration.

Although the agency doesn't have the spacecraft to send NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil at the moment, NASA is partnering with the private companies Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts to the station as early as next year.

The space agency is also using robots to explore other worlds like Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn, with other missions on the horizon including the landing of another rover on the Red Planet by 2020 and possibly sending humans to Mars as early as the 2030s.