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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

#531

Post by mulmen »

ACCount36 wrote: post #503
mulmen wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slicing at random would leave the same ratio of worker types. Random slices have the potential to cause enormous damage by removing critical contributors while also creating exploitable power vacuums. The actual solution is to just continue operating the way NASA has been operating because it's not actually a problem.

Not actually a problem? Have you seen what NASA is doing lately? SLS. Orion. Gateway. Ambitionless Artemis. JPL's disaster of an MSR proposal. NASA reeks of rot and decay. It's not in a good place, and hasn't been in a long time now. If you "just continue operating", it's only going to get worse.

SLS is Congress, not NASA. The core mission of NASA is space exploration and their achievements in that domain are unparalleled.

Randomly firing and cutting funding isn’t a solution. Especially not to a perceived problem. If you think the spending is excessive you have to do the hard work of explaining why and then the even harder work of fixing it. If that seems too hard then yeah, it’s fine.

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

#532

Post by zevets »

rtkwe wrote: post #150
eagerpace wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond FL, they’re careful to make sure parts of the rocket at built in EVERY state! Now something that should be cutting edge innovation is tied to Congress which is intentionally not innovative and you wonder why it falls behind.

There's that but also NASA gets continually screwed with, the moon return mission changed scope every 8 or so years when a new president came in and wanted to put their own stamp on the project to claim it for themselves.

It's slightly less cynical than that - it takes about eight years to design a space mission and rocket, but doing the detailed design is expensive as hell, so in order to meet a budget, they then change the mission, so they can go back to the vastly more affordable task of talking about doing work, vs doing work

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

#533

Post by Supermancho »

jacobolus wrote: post #450
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.

I think NASA cuts are about giving money to billionaires, so they can build or expand their capitalist version. Obviously, this will be more efficient because it funnels money to the wealthy directly.

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

#534

Post by BobbyJo »

CPLX wrote: post #339
BobbyJo wrote: post #333

The Federal Reserve is an example of a well run and focused organization, because they have a very short, very simple mandate: maximize employment and ensure price stability. Everything they do is in service to those two goals and every employee can hold themselves and their bosses accountable for those goals. Elected representatives and the American public can hold them accountable. If we want a more efficient and i…

This is a ridiculous statement. The Fed is a profoundly undemocratic institution that harnesses the power of the state to serve the interests of capital, and its current form is a recent development that coincides with the financialization of our economy and the decimation of manufacturing and the middle class. If you want the full argument it’s here: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/federal-reserve-independe...

I don't think its any less democratic than any other government organization run by appointees. Manufacturing's decimation had far more to do with globalization than banking regulation IMO.

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

#535

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

elcritch wrote: post #526
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NOAA, NASA, NIH, FWS, and DOE all regularly push how bad the situation is around global climate change. That's likely why they're getting targeted. The GOP's position on climate change is sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming LALALALALA and having credible government agencies pointing out the ongoing effects is detrimental to this strategy. Meanwhile the USDA, FWS, and DOE do those pesky regulatory thing…

> Meanwhile the USDA, FWS, and DOE do those pesky regulatory things True and that’s awesome. However to put up some of a counter those agencies also over-regulate. Bureaucracy tends to over-expand. Musks example of SpaceX having to calculate the likelihood of a rocket hitting a shark in the pacific. Musk is certainly exaggerating a bit, but is speaking to a real issue for many businesses struggling to keep up with ab…

“ However to put up some of a counter those agencies also over-regulate.”

Musk and DOGE had a wonderful opportunity to analyze these issues and address them and improve government efficiency. Instead they opted to cut whatever they didn’t like or couldn’t understand within five minutes. Musk should be deeply ashamed.

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

#537

Post by ryandrake »

godelski wrote: post #523
jacobolus wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cuts to NASA as well as NOAA, NIH, USGS, USDA, FWS, DOE, etc. are not really saving that much money, but are destroying literally trillions of dollars of future economic value (not to mention all sorts of work whose value can't be easily quantified). Maybe "smashing things and ruining people's lives and work is fun per se" is a better explanation than anything more complicated. Pretty shitty for the rest of us th…

> The cuts to [...] are not really saving that much money, but are destroying literally trillions of dollars of future economic value I think everyone (or at least the parent) understands that. I mean there's a part that's deeply connected to what I said in another comment[0] The real issue is essentially: which would you rather have, $1 now or $10 tomorrow?[1] People see it as savings because they have that money no…

I'm pretty sure that neither money saved today or tomorrow are factors in these cuts. This administration is out to grief science and scientists--it doesn't matter if it saves money or costs money. The whole point is hostility to science. It's not an economic decision.

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

#538

Post by ElevenLathe »

godelski wrote: post #523
jacobolus wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cuts to NASA as well as NOAA, NIH, USGS, USDA, FWS, DOE, etc. are not really saving that much money, but are destroying literally trillions of dollars of future economic value (not to mention all sorts of work whose value can't be easily quantified). Maybe "smashing things and ruining people's lives and work is fun per se" is a better explanation than anything more complicated. Pretty shitty for the rest of us th…

> The cuts to [...] are not really saving that much money, but are destroying literally trillions of dollars of future economic value I think everyone (or at least the parent) understands that. I mean there's a part that's deeply connected to what I said in another comment[0] The real issue is essentially: which would you rather have, $1 now or $10 tomorrow?[1] People see it as savings because they have that money no…

This is nonsense. Of course we want to be richer tomorrow than we are today, but we're plenty rich today. We -- the United States -- do not have a cashflow issue. We can meet all of our current obligations -- or could if there were any effort at efficient redistribution at all. The US federal government is maybe the least cashflow-constrained organization in human history. We want the $10 tomorrow, without any question whatsoever.

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

#539

Post by LtWorf »

CPLX wrote: post #339
BobbyJo wrote: post #333

The Federal Reserve is an example of a well run and focused organization, because they have a very short, very simple mandate: maximize employment and ensure price stability. Everything they do is in service to those two goals and every employee can hold themselves and their bosses accountable for those goals. Elected representatives and the American public can hold them accountable. If we want a more efficient and i…

This is a ridiculous statement. The Fed is a profoundly undemocratic institution that harnesses the power of the state to serve the interests of capital, and its current form is a recent development that coincides with the financialization of our economy and the decimation of manufacturing and the middle class. If you want the full argument it’s here: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/federal-reserve-independe...

How dare you be critical of capitalism on ycombinator?

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

#540

Post by cyphertruck »

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…

These cuts are absolutely not the ones I would make, but the reality is not as it is being portrayed.

The claim that SpaceX does not do science is false. Not only do they launch most of NASA's science missions, which counts, they also do independent science, including the Polaris Dawn and FRAM 2. Along with Axiom, they put science missions on the ISS, and all the NASA science done on ISS is facilitated by SpaceX putting humans there. Finally, literally everything that SpaceX has done or built is a result of science that SpaceX has had to do, including colder than ever propellants, and life support systems, etc. The Polaris Dawn spacewalk was not a replication of the 1960s spacewalks, as it was based on new suit science, etc.

Somehow, people like to pretend that probes landing on other planets is the only form of science that is done.

And the reality is that new entrants from RKLB, SpaceX, Firefly, and a lot of smaller companies are doing exactly this kind of science as well--- but at vastly lower cost.

The inescapable reality-- and this will always be the case with political organizations like NASA-- is no matter how well meaning they cannot do science as effectively as private organizations. NASA slows science down in large part because they are hamstrung by congress.

Yes, it looks like some way too expensive projects are getting cancelled and that means some waste of money. It's not the choice I would make.

But in the next 10 years, nearly %100 of all science will be done outside of NASA.... because the NASA overhead is too much, makes things too expensive, and less reliable.

For example, it's better to blow up 1 falcon one, and 2 falcon 9s, to get 500 successful falcon 9 launches at 1/100th the cost per kilogram of mass to orbit than to have a completely successful SLS system that launches only 2-3 times a decade.

The former accelerates science, lowers the cost of all science and more science gets done per dollar than the latter.

That transition is happening whether government, the senate and congress is aboard.... or not.

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