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

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

#461

Post by giantg2 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #408
nradov wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe they already have the propellant transfer worked out. There was a paper a few years back looking into Musk's general plan. They already had some mechanism for refueling. If I remember correctly, the biggest questions were around lifesupport systems with their efficiency and heat shields. Which were technically still solvable with current technologies and slightly different approaches.

From my perspective, the thing they're mostly waiting for is additional tech to make everything easier and lower risk, or for an aggressive administration that can push it and fund it.

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

#462

Post by unnamed76ri »

Pfhortune wrote: post #418
unnamed76ri wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government is 36 trillion in debt. How do you run things worse than that? No private company or citizen would survive blowing up their finances as bad as what the federal government has been doing for decades.

The government is not a company. It is ludicrous to expect it to operate like one.

I’d say it is ludicrous to be okay with them continually eroding our buying power with inflationary spending.

You’re right it isn’t a company. Its actions directly impact all of us whether we want to do business with them or not.

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

#463

Post by potato3732842 »

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…

>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].

Sounds like ye olde Sowell quote[1] about organizational priorities and budget cuts in action.

[1]https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/03/thomas_sowell_budge...

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

#464

Post by giantg2 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #446
giantg2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The point is that most of what NASA does is not something that people are exposed to. Nobody cares about the dozens of small breakthroughs that happen in the years leading up to a mission. Just as nobody cares about engine tech advancements in the planes flying over.

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

#465

Post by unnamed76ri »

scarface_74 wrote: post #397
unnamed76ri wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just factually not true. Obama and Biden both added more than Bush II. Trump on the other hand is a big spender…

This is not hard to look up.. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/which-united...

Yes, thank you for providing a source that supports what I wrote. Big of you to highlight your prior mistake.

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

#466

Post by godelski »

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 world leader in space science.
I also want to add that science is a critical investment area for anyone interested in engineering.

There is this common belief of "I just want to make things work" and that science is really unimportant here and are concerned with things that don't matter. The truth is that science builds the foundation for that other stuff. It is the very ground you stand on. Engineering without science is like trying to run without ground.

In a lot of ways, science is just like engineering (I say this having been both, professionally). Any good engineer knows it is important to find problems. Then you fix those problems. Well... that's really what science does too. When doing science you're just working at the next level of abstraction. It is all about "making things work." Everyone is on the same team here and I'm not sure why we draw these divisions. I mean what would science even be about if it wasn't "making things work?"

So I hear people say that engineering is where we get the real value (especially monetarily), but I'd disagree. It matters, but I think it is framing things weirdly. 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. I'd make a slightly less confident wager that the economic value of calculus is more valuable than all inventions post 1700. That's just one thing too... even if it was the only Science/Math "investment" then it seems like a pretty good ROI

[0] Yes, math, but I'm throwing under science. Nitpick if you want but you're missing the thesis

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

#467

Post by potato3732842 »

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…

>Then a few hours later it turned negative.

Happens all the time.

Europe vs us east vs us west.

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

#468

Post by leptons »

cyberax wrote: post #405
fennecbutt wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Securit…

>For once, people will get to experience direct consequences of their vote. And this is the silver lining in this whole mess.

They may experience consequences, but they sure won't care about any consequences so long as they still believe that "demonrats" are systematically raping babies. They'll endure any consequence as long as they think their team is punishing the libs.

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

#469

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #460
nomel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Heving been there 95% of the time you just learn the hard way whp theeold timers did it that way in the first place - and most of the rest you just make a different compromise that has different tradeoffs but isn't better.

[deleted]

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

#470

Post by potato3732842 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #419
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? People aren't inspired by safe shipping lanes. But quite a few are alive because of what global shipping enables.

>People aren't inspired by safe shipping lanes.

Captain Phillips was a pretty good movie.

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