4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by gammarator » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

Comments about SLS miss what’s happening. SLS is inefficient and wasteful, but human spaceflight is not what’s getting cut at NASA. Instead, very productive current and future science missions are getting killed, in defiance of Congress [1].

Until this year, NASA was the world leader in space science. We’re pushing out the experts who build and operate astrophysics missions like Hubble, Chandra, JWST, Kepler, TESS, Swift, and many more in planetary and heliophysics. This is a loss of capacity that will set the US back a generation.

The private sector is irrelevant here: SpaceX and friends don’t do scientific research.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/07/trump-administration-m...

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

#442

Post by nomel » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #438

nomel wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever org I've worked for slowly became unable to innovate because of "institutional knowledge". I think it's important to forget, to some extent, every once in a while. It forces a new traversal of the problem space, but in a modern context, with modern tools, fresh eyes, and a better understanding of what's needed. Thus we have Space X. There are some great interviews with Jim Keller, who has a similar perspective:…

Entrenched ways are not the same as institutional knowledge. You can have one without the other. Some things are not written down but executed as part of common knowledge, and if you drop enough people you'll have to relearn it the hard way.

> Entrenched ways are not the same as institutional knowledge.

I disagree, fundamentally. Institutional knowledge is a set of "truths" that are respected, so necessarily prune the solution space. The only way to get those pruned branches back is to disregard it, by reconsidering, and re-traversing that solution space.

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

#443

Post by waz0wski » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

eagerpace wrote: post #366

cma wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?

I’m speaking of SLS. It’s a solution in search of a problem.

It's worse than that - SLS siply can't do what it was supposed to on paper even after 10's of billions, resulting in the secondary boondoggle of the Lunar Gateway which will waste billions more and still fail to achieve lunar-relevant

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

#444

Post by yieldcrv » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

The private space cargo industry is taking off so it’s decent time to do this

But entitlements and defense are the biggest costs to the nation and the consequences of cutting everything else are not worth it until these other things are addressed - or the nations finds a way to collect more revenues

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

#445

Post by ACCount36 » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #372

Yet NASA still hasn't killed the Senate Launch System. The Lunar Gateway was just funded. The wrong stuff is being cut.

SLS and Gateway should be the first to die, not the last. But politicians just can't stop funding their pork barrels.

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

#446

Post by Hikikomori » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #243

jebarker wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be Are they 1% as inspiring as what the DoD does with their budget? I don't mean to be snarky, but level of inspiration is pretty subjective and difficult to put a price tag on. Honestly, I feel like the NASA budget needs to be considered in context relative to the DoD budget and then these cuts look much less convincing as being necessary.

"Are they 1% as inspiring as what the DoD does with their budget?" 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 pas…

Clearly NASA should do more stadium flyovers.

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

#447

Post by mulmen » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

eagerpace wrote: post #298

eagerpace wrote: post #125

I’m trying to think how I feel about this. I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006. Follow the commercial development closely since then. Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be. NASA needs an overhaul. This isn’t how I would do it, but that’s not how things work in the real world. SLS is the elephant…

I hesitated posting this because my very moderate east coast American perspective seems to be appreciated less and less here. I posted this on a lazy Sunday morning and it got a lot of positive initial comments and discussion. Then a few hours later it turned negative. Science is great but launch vehicle innovation is where the problem is so that’s why I focused on SLS. We could easily have 100 JWSTs today if somethi…

NASA didn't want SLS and was very vocal about that. Congress earmarks funding for pet projects which is the only reason we have SLS. I'm not sure how you can say NASA is "dragging their feet" while also claiming to care about space. NASA's list of accomplishments is long and there isn't a gap.

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

#448

Post by ACCount36 » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #156

bradley13 wrote: post #59

I'm sure the bureaucracy can stand some serious cutting. However, with voluntary programs like this, you tend to lose the best people.

Hot Take: Maybe this DOGE approach of sledgehammering the bureaucracies is all there is left to do? Look, I have family that works for the Feds. I have also collected money from federal programs. I know the pain that is coming and is here. It really really sucks, and it will suck for me too, though not as badly. But the 'scalpel' approach where you go in, understand the system, take out the bad parts, leave the good,…

You're onto something.

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.

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

#449

Post by const_cast » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

aerostable_slug wrote: post #359

debatem1 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democrats stuffing government bureaucracies with do-nothing jobs for their buddies Ignoring the partisanship this argument doesn't make sense on its face: government jobs pay extremely poorly. You might say "well what if you hold more than one of them?", but you can't do that: a federal employee can be employed in two different roles, but their pay is capped at 40 hours a week across the federal government. Anyone…

What are you on about? Government work is a wonderful career opportunity for the non-HN crowd. These are often people of at best average intelligence and near zero ambition who want a cushy career that you can't be fired from unless you punch a supervisor (and even then it's tough). There are wonderful people in government, I've worked with them. But there are a ton of people along for the ride and it's absolutely in…

No It's not.

The pay, job per job, is significantly lower across the public sector. You take a massive pay-cut. I don't know what lied to you and told you it's "cushy", but it's definitely not.

Also, you can absolutely be fired for performance. In fact, across the public sector probationary periods are typically longer than in the private sector. Meaning, it's actually easier for you to get fired.

These are the types of things people just sort of... make up... and then other people run with it because they like how it sounds and it reaffirms their ideology.

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

#450

Post by jacobolus » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

gammarator wrote: post #441

Comments about SLS miss what’s happening. SLS is inefficient and wasteful, but human spaceflight is not what’s getting cut at NASA. Instead, very productive current and future science missions are getting killed, in defiance of Congress [1]. Until this year, NASA was the world leader in space science. We’re pushing out the experts who build and operate astrophysics missions like Hubble, Chandra, JWST, Kepler, TESS, S…

The point seems to be to cut US scientific capacity (and more generally intellectual research capacity) across the board, as a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior.