Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kcrw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 774 posts

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

#401

Post by watwut »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #119
watwut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, they did not welcomed previous democratic president. And somehow, I doubt they would welcome Harris the same way. Like common, they were eager and happy to kiss the ring and support him.

> Somehow, they did not welcomed previous democratic president They did, but such information is not brought up due to political bias here. For example, how many people here know that Uber donated $1 million(the max amount possible) to Biden's inauguration? Google, Amazon and Microsoft donated too.

Check the people on the inauguration itself. The actual public celebrating from leaders went toward Trump. Plus multiple prominent tech leaders are behind the project 2025 itself and really pushing Trump politics. Oh, and Musk was right there on the stage and even in government.

Google and Microsoft and Uber were paying both parties, that part is right.

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

#402

Post by onepremise »

samrus wrote: post #153

I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up

It's all part of the plan, which is referred to as the butterfly revolution, by Curtis Yarvin. Leaders that have literally invested in this platform are buying into this nonsense. Peter Theil, JD Vance, Marc Andreesen, Garry Tan, Srinivasan, and many others, wanting to overthrow democracy and dissolve nation states. This effort is to establish Network States with those that worship them, sycophants and cults. They want to transform the US into an Autocracy. The polarization of the media and political parties is on purpose. They want America to fall. It's not a secret, not a conspiracy theory. It's definitely being rolled out by billionaires. It would be wise for others here to really do your research and understand why we are being polarized to hate each other. Enter butterfly revolution:

1. Reboot (“full-power start”) Suspend or bypass existing constitutional limits; concentrate absolute sovereignty in one new organization—analogous to Allied occupation powers in post-1945 Japan/Germany. Eliminate checks and balances that block rapid change.

2. CEO-Monarch model A single executive (chosen like a corporate CEO) rules; the former president becomes a figurehead “chairman of the board.” Treat the state as a firm run for efficiency, not democratic representation.

3. RAGE strategy “Retire All Government Employees” by mass-firing the civil service and replacing it with loyal appointees. Remove institutional resistance (“the Cathedral”) and ensure obedience.

4. Parallel regime Build a fully staffed shadow government in exile before inauguration; unveil it on Day 1 to take over agencies at once. Prevent the bureaucratic slow-rolling that stymied Trump’s first term.

5. Media & academia clampdown Defund or shutter universities and independent press seen as hostile. Break what Yarvin calls the Cathedral’s cultural dominance.

Resources:

"The Straussian Moment", https://www.hoover.org/research/peter-thiel-straussian-momen...

Freedom Cities in Trumps presser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJA_GBhCGgE

Billionaire example: https://www.praxisnation.com

Apocalypse Now? Peter Thiel on Ancient Prophecies and Modern Tec, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqHueZNEzig

A.I., Mars and Immortality: Are We Dreaming Big Enough? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV7YgnPUxcU&t=404s

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-p...

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

#403

Post by ACCount36 »

camcil wrote: post #205
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 worked as a civil servant for a decade and a half in various capacities up until a couple of weeks ago. I'm the last person that would tell you that there isn't plenty of fat that could be trimmed. Slicing at random, multiple delayed resignation opportunities, and threatening cuts to benefits, however, is doing the opposite. Those that are skilled enough and in demand, or like me lucky enough, to quickly find other…

People who should be fired are the very people who would be the best at justifying why they shouldn't be fired. Not at all by a coincidence.

"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.

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

#404

Post by marcosdumay »

Aurornis wrote: post #292
marcosdumay wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad DMVs oddly had bigger offices, they just had people who moved at a snail’s pace and didn’t care about anything other than running the clock out until they could go home. Well, all of the people? You are certainly looking at the consequence of something that you don't fully understand. All of the people in a place don't start acting the same way for no reason.

I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but it’s no mystery why certain institutions start functioning this poorly. It’s because there are no consequences for slow or poor performance. The people who want to do a good job get fed up and leave. The people who just want paychecks and no consequences stay. It’s not a mystery.

Ok, I'll have to call bullshit on every level of that rationale.

- Those people are not doing teamwork. People (competent or not) don't leave good jobs just because some random coworker is lazy.

- Even if they were doing teamwork, hardworking incompetent team members are the ones that make life hard for everybody else, not lazy ones.

- Those people are not reaping any concrete benefit from being lazy. Being forced to sit in a chair the entire day with nothing to do is torture; if they are picking that instead of doing their work there's a real problem somewhere.

- I really doubt the people in question actually face "no consequences" and are not threatened all the time. That almost never happens in practice.

- When faced with some problem overspread through an entire organization, your proposal is to go and punish the least powerful people. I'd recommend you to think about why you think that is what is going to fix the problem.

- People with that kind of attitude have an almost perfect track record of creating this kind of problem or making it worse. It doesn't matter if it's in government or business.

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

#405

Post by cyberax »

fennecbutt wrote: post #388
jzb wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth making the point: a lot of people simply don’t see it (yet?) for what it is and still support the people doing it.

Well there's also just the "own the libs durrrrr!" crowd. Politics has become a sports game. I lack confidence in a good chunk of the population to vote in their best interests, perhaps democracy isn't the right way. Or voting on something should require an exam on the subject.

> I lack confidence in a good chunk of the population to vote in their best interests

That's because for a long time the political system in the US insulated people from the consequences of their decisions. A dum-dum state government from Idaho could vote to slash education and healthcare spending, but the Federal government had always been there to provide a backstop. Whatever the local idiots decide, Social Security, SNAP, Medicare were always there to provide at least _some_ safety net. (and the easy migration within the US helped a lot to alleviate local issues, which is now also gone)

The political system in the US has also always been biased towards conservatism, making any changes difficult. For better or worse. That's how the extremely toxic meme that "both parties are the same" was born.

That's also how political orientation became a part of the identity for many people: "My family has always been voting for Republicans/Democrats".

Now it's all gone. Dum-dum Republicans are destroying the safety net at the Federal level, and they are doing it in a way that will start hurting people within years. Not decades down the line. For once, people will get to experience direct consequences of their vote. And this is the silver lining in this whole mess.

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

#406

Post by eagerpace »

spauldo wrote: post #396
eagerpace wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SLS is a solution for the problem of the US needing a large launch vehicle. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's taken way more time and money than anticipated and hasn't shown good results. Budget and schedule overruns are expected with any large project - it's just the nature of contracting. But there are limits, and SLS blew past them quite a while ago. I'm not sure how much of it is NASA's fault given how…

That’s fair, it’s gone on so long that the problem it was solving for has evolved. Someone has to be strong enough to know when to cut the sunk cost and shift gears and that’s how I’m choosing to look at the current situation.

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

#407

Post by ACCount36 »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #271
perihelions wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLS doesn't serve any actual NASA needs. It's fake make-work. Case in point: Congress expressly ordered NASA to launch Europa Clipper on SLS, to make it appear that SLS was indispensable to core NASA science missions. But, due to design flaws, SLS turned out to be technically incapable of launching Clipper at all. So they backtracked and allowed free-market competition to compete for the Clipper launch. Which it did:…

How many orbital refuels would Starship need for a lunar landing and return mission? Something like 20? I honestly wonder why we didn't just stick with the Saturn V. 13 launches and only one (non-catastrophic) failure. If it aint broke don't fix it.

How many tons of payload would that Starship land? How many could Saturn V?

If you want to go beyond planting a flag, you need to be thinking of how to land hundreds of tons of equipment and industrial infrastructure on the Moon.

Saturn V isn't a very good fit for that. But SLS is much worse.

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

#408

Post by oceanplexian »

nradov wrote: post #268
giantg2 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the Moon landing was extremely agreessive and faced huge challenges yet was still achieved using technology and knowledge way behind what we have today. If we really wanted to put someone on Mars in the same aggressive manner as we had with the Moon, we could launch that mission by 2030 (travel time would take longer and there would be no return). The only real obstacle is the lack of will and money.

Nah. No amount of will and money could launch a Mars landing mission by 2030 with a reasonable chance of success. Some of the critical components don't exist yet and development can't be significantly accelerated. This is the real world, not a Michael Bay movie.

I don't see why it couldn't be done in a crunch if we had to for some reason. SpaceX isn't pursuing such a thing because it would be a dumb idea rather than wait for the Starship program.

Falcon 9 regularly sends 17 Tons to LEO 2-3 times per week and is human rated. We could probably build a Mars shuttle in orbit, similar to how the ISS was constructed. We've already landed an SUV-sized robot on Mars. There are some open questions like orbital propellent transfer but it doesn't seem like it would be impossible to me.

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

#409

Post by oceanplexian »

verzali wrote: post #95
magicloop wrote: post #40

The real game the current administration is playing is to land on Mars before their current term expires. This mirrors the political, prestige, and technology triumph of the Kennedy administration. This is why the BBB Bill refocussed on the Mars mission despite having cuts. What is being cut is otherwise a symptom of the budget deficit (7%) and the fact that politically they cut areas where there are not republican v…

They're not going to land on Mars by 2028.

I would be willing to bet there's a high probability that Starship lands on Mars by 2028 without people on it. The real question will be in how many pieces.

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

#410

Post by CivBase »

jebarker wrote: post #175
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…

> 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?

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.

Post reply on HN