4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

True for academic institutions. No evidence this is the motivation at NASA. Simpler: science costs money and leadership believes that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut than paying for poor folks' healthcare or basic research.

Fortunately, it looks like Beijing is ready to pick up the torch [1].

[1] https://www.fdd.org/analysis/policy_briefs/2025/03/19/aiming...

That doesn't mean that government investment in science is necessarily a good idea.

> I'd be willing to wager that the economic impact of Newton and Leibniz's invention of Calculus[0] is larger than the economic impact of any engineering product, ever.

Where they financed by the government? Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets and say that their return-on-investment was awesome, but that doesn't mean buying lottery tickets is a good idea.

Exactly. Like if I am an uber driver and I bring a surgeon to a hospital, it counts as me doing surgery since the most important part of surgery is the process of driving to the place where it happens

This is exactly how anyone would describe your reply. Your claim is so bizzare and its logic so convoluted that the only reason I can imagine for it is political motivation. But I could be wrong and don't want to get into a flamewar. So let's ignore the reasons and reassess the logic instead. Most of the counter I can come up with are variations of what the other commenter replied, so I will leave that to them. Instead, let's look at why your argument never pans out.

Private companies always look for short to medium term profits, since it affects their balance sheets and ultimately their survival. That constraint isn't favorable for scientific research and science missions, because there is a long lead time for the research results to be converted into a commercially viable products. Some companies with a large product portfolio and steady profits still do some research, as long as it isn't too costly or time consuming. An example is the pharma industry.

But science involving the biosphere, atmosphere, astronomy/astrophysics, space, interplanetary missions etc are on the other end of that spectrum - extremely costly and no commercialization for the foreseeable future. The only way private industries are going to do it is if the government funds them with short term profits - in which case, it's the government's program, not the industry's. Even Musk's Mars dream is dependent on government funding in that manner, though his intent isn't science either. What makes you think the private industry will take it upon themselves to fund and conduct research that makes no economic sense?

Similar sentiment is felt about any other organization run by people who are seen as having had a hand in kneecapping NASA - working for their companies is not appealing. Perhaps her views will change after she's had more time to process the sting of the layoff notice.

And her prior work for the DoD left her with an extraordinarily bad impression of the culture. Admittedly she'd only worked at a single Navy Yard and different branches in different services can have different cultures, but nevertheless - the DoD is not appealing either. Depending on the results of her job search, that might change.

For Amazon Kuiper - no relevant roles are available in the region and, as far as what's listed on the website, there's no jobs that allow for working remotely outside of relevant travel.

Blue Origin...same issue as with Kuiper - remote work doesn't seem to be a thing and they've no local presence with relevant jobs available.

Those companies are transportation companies when it comes to space.

Is it typical for companies in the satellite design/manufacturing space for parts/electrical components engineers to be able to work remotely outside of travelling for inspections/supplier audits/component testing?

They don't call it the Senate Launch System for nothing

  > It’s more accurate to say that Congress needs an overhaul.

But there's a few programs that have these types of problems, not just NASA. IMO, there's probably more efficient ways to meet each goal, by decoupling the problem. But either way, we can't solve "the problem" unless we actually recognize what it is (and there's a lot more than what I've just mentioned)

[0] https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nasainthe50states/

https://youtu.be/XFIvKSVRtZ0

https://youtu.be/sGT-8PHSVso

https://idlewords.com/2024/05/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

Which it was capable of doing all along—Congress and NASA lied about this, misled the public, to make it appear that their jobs-creating, pork-barrel project was serving some genuine need NASA had. It wasn't! They had alternatives all along—they were pretending they didn't.

When you read about these things, you have to know all the actors you're getting information from, and what motives they have to mislead you.

There's not a single real mission in NASA's budget, or conceivable future budget, that needs an SLS—full stop. Sole exception being the moon project, which was created with the express purpose of finding a problem SLS would be the only answer for (and even that's now in doubt, what with Starship).

Consequently, it can't do a Moon mission like the Saturn V could, it requires the idiotic nonsense that is the NHRO, which will endanger astronauts because it can't get Orion (which is a whole other can of pork) into a low lunar orbit. It also can't handle the lander, so now Artemis has to count on SpaceX and/or Blue Origin for that, which is probably what you're alluding to not working. But if those don't work, then neither does Artemis and then how can you say SLS works?

Another problem with SLS is it's expensive AF and has a terrible launch cadence. Maybe you think that doesn't really matter, but it is for those reasons that NASA isn't going to test Orion again before putting astronauts on it. The last time they tested Orion, to verify the design and modelling, the heat shield started to come apart. But NASA can't do another test flight, because SLS sucks so hard, so instead they're going to fly Orion on an untested trajectory and trust their modeling to keep astronauts safe. Their same modeling which failed to predict Orion performance the first time. It's homicidally reckless. There is a real risk of this becoming yet another instance of NASA management's "go culture" getting people killed. Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, each time they say they've learned their lesson and will make changes to ensure it doesn't happen again, but either those changes are only superficial or they decay over time. We're now on the precipice of NASA management flying astronauts around the Moon with a heat shield which may quite possibly disintegrate during reentry, because SLS is too expensive for NASA to test it but NASA management wants to move forward anyway.

MSR is a fine enough concept though, I think Rocket Lab's proposal to get it done is sound and the government should take them up on the offer. If nothing else, the money to Rocket Lab for MSR development would help to make Rocket Lab a more viable SpaceX competitor, which should pay off for the US government in the long run.

It would be closer to 2%, but we could measure it by engagement. Ask people what their last positive interaction was with NASA vs the military. The military does all sorts of outreach with things like the Blue Angels, stadium flyovers, competitions at fairs, etc. Ask them what NASA has done over the past year vs what the military has done over the past year. Chances are many people couldn't name something NASA achieved in the past year. Would it be at the 2% number? I don't know.

I'm not saying one is better than the other. I think both should look for budget inefficiency, but until those are identified I wouldn't propose budget cuts. But it does seem that the NASA missions could be more inspiring recently.

I dare say a great many people are very inspired by what the DoD does with their budget. Inspired to what... well, that's another subject. And the most inspired people are not the ones living in the US.

People aren't inspired by safe shipping lanes. But quite a few are alive because of what global shipping enables.

"Slicing at random" could actually outperform most other methods, as long as it's truly random. You can weasel your way out of a firing based on vibes or performance reviews - but you can't convince an RNG that its roll was wrong.

The national labs are also a lot like this.

Which do you think takes a severance package?

Happens all the time.

Europe vs us east vs us west.

The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.

I bet plenty have that useful "unwritten institutional knowledge" that could help newer programs. (F.ex. instructions for a nuclear waste storage said to use kitty litter, but didn't say it was because it was a cheap source of bentonite clay; someone substituted some modern paper variant and caused a small nuclear incident).

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/world/europe/china-recrui...

https://asiatimes.com/2024/12/what-uk-fighter-pilots-did-and...

And finally, the official response: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/former-armed-forces-perso...

It comes down to money and private interests dominating Western politics. It has bad but also good sides. Human conflict used to be about extermination a few thousand years ago, that is what I think of when I read such headlines, such things can actually also be seen as progress. We now have priorities other than our tribe or nation, that has good sides too. I like the Napoleonic war story where Napoleon gave a medal to a British scientist, Humphry Davy.

While bad for the nation, I try to see it as a mixed bag that people from the top down are... flexible.

The price we pay is, possibly, worse outcomes in conflicts. What we gain is that after conflicts end we get back to normal life - with one another - very quickly and relatively easily.

And having worked on some classified systems doesn't preclude employment in related fields. It does restrict what you can share, of course.

not everyone wants to work for a company that is well known for grinding 20-somethings into the dust with an extremely poor work-life balance.

Perhaps our coolest diplomacy program. I love that RU and USA have managed to cooperate in space through many decades of conflict.

Sending things to space is a small part of what NASA does. "Aeronautics" is not "space rocketry", and all federal agencies do more than what their name indicates.

The only thing left to do was the sledgehammer?

Cutting all probationary employees or recent promotions was just an awful strategy. For every department in the government.

The issue is, if you do small targeted cuts, you'll spare the very people you want to cut. Because they're the best at playing office politics and finding ways to justify why they shouldn't be cut.

If you can't find a way to bypass that, your options are few. One of those options is the sledgehammer approach. Axe entire agencies, fire everyone and never hire of the fired people back. Rebuild an organization from the ground up, with new people and less rot.

It's what was done in ex-USSR countries after the fall of USSR. It wasn't pretty. It worked.

And what exactly is left of the mission now? Not much to keep working for in that regard

I presume we’ll be paying up to $576,000 for a senior engineer (GS15) equivalent from SpaceX

At least in past when people wanted to burn everything down they had a good reason. This is truly the dumbest period in human history.

I also don't think that bailing out SVB is a sign that Dodd-Frank was just symbolic, since not doing so would have pretty significantly hurt the USA's tech sector, which is is strategic nationally for the economy.

But I can see an argument for limiting the Fed's purview to mostly be about monetary policy and less about enforcement of legislation, as it's done in other countries.

I don't think it's correct to blame the NASA, the agency, for management decisions made by their overseer!

*(Imagine what SpaceX would look like if Starbase were split into 50 pieces in 50 states—nosecones from Alaska, winglets from Senator Shelby's district in Alabama... Imagine, if their senior executive wasn't breathing down everyone's necks to build things faster, but instead prioritized employee headcount as his objective function (maximizing–not minimizing). The way Congressional lawmakers run their pet projects is quite ridiculous).

You seem to be unaware that NASA does run a profit, and that SpaceX wouldn’t have been possible without NASA’s research and money. NASA has invested tens of billions in SpaceX.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-versus-spacex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Economic_impact...

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3721375-how-much-does...

However, they want to do NASA work which is very R&D focused and has great opportunities for innovation, plenty of low TRL work, and a bro ad variety of missions.

Industry isn’t doing that much low TRL work

Inequality, as measured by GINI has been falling both for the EU as a whole and within most European countries for decades now. The last decade in particular has seen declines in nearly all EU countries.

Taking the EU on average the last time it increased was in 2014 - which is to be expected as the 2013 expansion allowed a number of relatively poor countries into the union.

For individual countries, you can check the statistics here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI

A few examples, I looked at Ireland in particular, and inequality has never been lower - the earliest statistics I could find is from the mid-1980s. Inequality peaked around 2000 for the UK and has declined hugely since then. France is more equal than it was in 2000 although the fall is less dramatic than that for the UK. Admittedly Germany has seen a slight rise since 2000 but Germany has also absorbed millions of very poor refugees in that time.

The US is an outlier globally - with rising inequality over the last few decades.

Slightly off-topic, this untrue claim of rising inequality in Europe is often presented without challenge and then used to justify some radical political solution. To my mind, it's using the same political "mind hack" that the the MAGA/alt-right in the USA have used (in this case concerning race, immigrants, global multilateralism, or social tolerance - "wokism" - in general).

For both, the veracity of the claims is apparently unimportant and uninteresting as long as the claim aligns with one's political orientation. The goal of these oft repeated untruths is to provoke indignation or anger - in order to drum up support for some radical political "solution".

The feel good explanations are just that - feel good euphemisms. Acting on them failed in the past repeatedly. Politicians who tried to improve situation of these people were punished, repeatedly. Meanwhile, politicians acting in offensive and harmful way were rewarding even when they made lifes of their voters worst.

We really should stop projecting these good faith falsehoods when the are and were clearly false.

If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Sadly those who didn't believe didn't vote enough.

All I know is that the 1990s until now have been a bonanza for some people but increasingly difficult for many others. I blame this on the financialization of our economy, with housing policy in America’s coastal metro areas definitely not helping (municipalities restrict supply through zoning and other mechanisms, and the financialization of our economy only exacerbated matters by pouring gasoline on the demand side). This is a failure of our leadership class; I’m not just talking about politicians, but I’m talking about our wealthy, our corporate executives, and even ourselves when we have positions of influence. Collectively the leadership of our country has chosen maximizing their own material benefit at the expense of maintaining a livable society. The result is anger due to Americans increasly having a harder time just getting by while our “leadership” keeps adding to their power and wealth.

Due to anger over establishment politicians, the Republican Party has been completely captured by MAGA, and the Democratic Party has a very vocal left wing that came close to winning the 2016 primary and was a serious contender in 2020.

Unfortunately Trump on a good day is far more destructive than Clinton, both Bushes, Obama, and Biden on their worst days. Trump’s neo-mercantilist economic policies won’t bring prosperity, but unfortunately his stance on “culture war” matters have resonated with large swaths of the American electorate; we’ve long had problems with racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and other related issues since the colonial era.

Moreover, despite Trump’s promises in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” Trump is backed by many prominent billionaires and other influential and powerful people. Trump is not a one-man operation; he would have no power without an entire apparatus of GOP politicians and a stacked Supreme Court.

The only thing keeping Trump’s popularity afloat is his relentless attacks on “enemies” of MAGA, such as immigrants, scientists, universities, unflattering media outlets, Democratic politicians, etc. But eventually the fallout of his reckless policies will trickle down to Trump voters in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and either when Trump runs out of enemies or when the MAGA base gets crushed by the weight of high prices and are looking for answers, what are Trump and MAGA politicians going to do?

Unfortunately I don’t see any easy solutions. A return to the pre-2017 status quo ante is only going to lead to the same leadership that led to such anger in the first place. However, staying the course is definitely going to lead to a crash. The solution is going to need to come from the people, but it’s hard for average people in America to compete against systems that entrench the power of our two-party system and that require massive amounts of money to effectively compete. There are no easy ways out of this mess.

Not to mention - tariffs are essentially an inflation tax on _every_single_purchase_.

How exactly is Trump reducing the deficit by any significant margin?

The thing that's exploding is Starship, which is still under development. Their production vehicles are among the most reliable in history. Falcon has a 99% mission success rate a 95% landing success rate and Falcon Heavy has a 100% mission success rate.

The mission is mars and the money making endeavors (starlink) are to bring in the cash to do that.

I’d note SpaceX is by far the most successful but by far not the only player in that space.

The brain drain and funding attack is on non military goals of NASA as well as on college and specifically graduate level people in the United States because they don’t ideologically align to the president. It’s a cultural revolution America style.

In some ways, this isn't wrong. It's easier to get a private company to do that than to get NASA to do it, because there's not some congresscritter from Alabama or wherever constantly trying to direct aspects of the project into their state, or to make the project serve their patrons' interests.

Of course, you could also say that up until recently, Elon himself was just as much of a patron, but still.

I mean if you were tasked with "government efficiency" don't you think the lowest hanging fruit would be the Pentagon budget? But, sure, go after air traffic control instead.

Only a devils advocate would believe that with this administration still giving his companies massive government contracts [1] and regulation win falls [2]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grok-elon-musk-xai-pentagon-con...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-musk-spacex-rocket-...

Jared Isaacman is out, and what we're seeing actually happen now is the opposite of that. All the pork barrels are getting funded, and the brunt of budget cuts seems to be stated to be born by science missions like Roman Space Telescope.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562399

Technology made all of this possible. From amazon (destruction of local shops) to uber (not saying the old system was good, but who needs transit concentrated into the hands of a few) to google (monopolizing and stifling search and adtech). And who knows what role large scale manipulation by stochastic propaganda parrots will play.

Or Social networks as an easy way of spreading misinformation.

New to the club AI that delivers convincing sound, photo and video „proofs“ for any fake news they want including elaborated texts fitting to their target audience

Shit education leads to pliable humans leads to social manipulation leads to desired outcomes from marketing efforts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_emigration

- Randy Marsh

It's ironic that you'd blame them for the thing they didnt want to do.

If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve been building reusable rockets like the ones elon is building now, except in like, 1980.

Do you remember when a Republican presidential nominee defended his opponent from a racist question at a Republican Rally, calling him a "decent family man?"

--

Then, can you think of a time when a POTUS committed a pump a security he was selling, only to dump it immediately after his inauguration, and it it was barely talked about at at all?

Can't pinpoint who you are referring to. Gemini thinks Yeltsin? But neither it nor I remember any "greatness" promises from the guy.

Also, if you're doing a fair comparison between public and private sector you've got to consider all the launch startups that aren't SpaceX, including the ones that haven't successfully launched...