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

#711

Post by kube-system » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #482

jacobolus wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 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 read…

> 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.

That's a simple explanation but not a good one. All government salaries across all jobs everywhere in the federal government are about 4% of the federal budget.

The DRPs going on are 100% about "draining the swamp", not saving money. This is literally what the administrators of these agencies are saying on TV news. They think science is biased against their worldviews and they want to replace them.

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

#712

Post by nomel » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:01 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #705

nomel wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is figuring out what things do NOT work, not what did back then Yes, this is my point. It's pruning the solution space before traversing it. The diligent approach is to temporarily disregard that knowledge, and do a quick re-exploration to test if it's still true. > to some extent This was put in my first comment with severe intent, that many seemed to have missed.

In my eyes, they already traversed it and can explain why it's very similar to an old idea. They don't must see an old idea woth lipstick on it and instantly jump on it for the sake of trying something new. As of now, this same mentality is used to push AI into everywhere. Not only is the intent bad, but the tech doesn't even work. That's not "resisting change". That's experimenting and realizing the hype was just th…

> In my eyes, they already traversed it and can explain why it's very similar to an old idea.

This was precisely my point in [1]. It's fundamentally the same: a pruning of the solution space without re-traversal.

> why it's very similar to an old idea.

And, with diligence, you verify that the new context is exactly the same as the old. You do this by knowing that it might not be, in other words, you temporarily suspending your trust in that knowledge, and re-traverse it with the current context.

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

#713

Post by lawlessone » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #701

lawlessone wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I no longer think he's deliberately acting on their behalf. He's just so stupid that's equivalent to that.

For those that worked so diligently to put him in place, the result is the same nonetheless.

Absolutely. :/

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

#714

Post by lawlessone » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:15 PM UTC

psunavy03 wrote: post #649

lawlessone wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>leaps and bounds repeated explosions?

You do realize that while Starship mishaps are making headlines, the Falcon platform is in the background printing money with basically zero major issues, right?

fair point

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

#715

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:20 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #712

johnnyanmac wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my eyes, they already traversed it and can explain why it's very similar to an old idea. They don't must see an old idea woth lipstick on it and instantly jump on it for the sake of trying something new. As of now, this same mentality is used to push AI into everywhere. Not only is the intent bad, but the tech doesn't even work. That's not "resisting change". That's experimenting and realizing the hype was just th…

> In my eyes, they already traversed it and can explain why it's very similar to an old idea. This was precisely my point in [1]. It's fundamentally the same: a pruning of the solution space without re-traversal. > why it's very similar to an old idea. And, with diligence, you verify that the new context is exactly the same as the old. You do this by knowing that it might not be , in other words, you temporarily susp…

>It's fundamentally the same

It's a thin line of wisdom and conservatism, but an important distinction. People in these positions work on billion dollar software, so they can't just try out every idea that comes to mind in prod. But that's exactly what tends to be proposed: big multi month initiatives, not some prototype to test over a sprint.

The important question I learned to ask was "what problem am I trying to solve". One aspect of this thin line tends to be a muddy answer to this question. When you can only suspect and make grand showings instead of showing pragmatic use case you may not in fact be iterating, but experimenting.

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

#716

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC

chadcmulligan wrote: post #602

brandmeyer wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any argument that is filled with this much ragebait should be dismissed out of hand.

I was hoping it was nonsense and someone would point out the errors, no such luck so far.

It's not complete nonsense, but it conveniently leaves out key relevant details and includes key pieces of misinformation needed to make the talking points make sense (as you would expect from rage bait.)

> Early on, SLS designers made the catastrophic decision to reuse Shuttle hardware

The law that mandated that NASA built the SLS also required that they re-use that hardware. This wasn't a choice made by NASA designers but by a bipartisan congress and it wasn't designed so much to advance our space program so much as a way to keep funneling money to space contractors with the end of the Shuttle program.

Any article that proposed to discuss the "lunacy" of Artemis without ever mentioning Congress's role in that lunacy is pretty clearly rage bait.

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

#717

Post by lenerdenator » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

jotux wrote: post #688

lenerdenator wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to speak for the other commenter, but there's a perception that private industry (SpaceX specifically) has been more agile in getting some things done than NASA had been; specifically, getting a purpose-built ISS taxi (the Dragon) built, tested, and launched. 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 Ala…

>specifically, getting a purpose-built ISS taxi (the Dragon) built, tested, and launched. I still don't understand this. NASA funded the development of dragon and a few other companies through their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS 1 and 2) contracts. It's right in the name, Commercial Resupply. NASA isn't building anything in these contracts, just defining requirements and overseeing execution and spending. >In som…

> NASA funded the development of dragon and a few other companies through their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS 1 and 2) contracts. It's right in the name, Commercial Resupply. NASA isn't building anything in these contracts, just defining requirements and overseeing execution and spending.

Exactly. They're not building anything. When NASA builds something you get a bunch of agencies also trying to hitch on. Requirements get diluted and less focused. Senator Hypertension from Alabama or Louisiana or wherever won't let the funding get through committee until they build the facility for testing it in a swamp.

The thing about Senator Hypertension, though, is that he completely lacks a sense of irony, and thus, also thinks government is inherently wasteful and that some private business can do anything government can do, better, no matter what the task is. So he's also okay with letting some well-capitalized company owned by a billionaire - I mean, a scrappy underdog of a company built with good-ol' American know-how - get a contract to do it instead of NASA.

And in doing that, he's willing to forego his swamp facility.

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

#718

Post by FirmwareBurner » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #617

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit happens, what can you do about it? Do you think garbage men, teachers or doctors will care about the tough job market of SW engineers? Everyone's job and everyone's lives have challenges, nobody else will cry for you, it's still up to you to deal with whatever problems life throws at you.

No. Flip it around. I care about the salaries and working condition of garbage men, teachers and doctors, even if they don't value mine. All three of those jobs you listed have vested interest groups who are standing in the way of a better life for those who provide these essential services, or are artificially controlling the market. What we do about it is educate the public and form institutions that are motivated…

>No. Flip it around. I care about the salaries and working condition of garbage men, teachers and doctors

Great that you care? And what are you dong about it? Are you voluntarily paying more taxes to your local city/council/state?

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

#719

Post by godelski » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:26 PM UTC

candu wrote: post #592

eru wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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,…

Government investment in science is...the only way basic science happens, really. I'd recommend reading The Entrepreneurial State [1] here: in essence, basic science pays off too slowly to interest even the most deeply-pocketed capital interests, but it pays off, so wise societies invest in it; Silicon Valley owes its existence to massive formative public investments in underlying technologies. Not to mention that sm…

  > a high minimum investment

This is the only part I actually disagree with.

Science is incredibly cheap. It can have a long time to mature but interestingly that is dependent on the number of "bonds", with quicker returns when there's more "bonds" issued.

I'd say there's 4 common classes of misinterpretation:

  Perception bias:
  ----------------

Most of science is performed by grad students and academics. Neither of which are known to make much money and the former is known to make poverty wages lol. I can say as a recent graduate that one summer internship at a big tech company gave me more money than my university's spend for the rest of the year. And as an intern I was still much cheaper than a full employer. My equivalent yearly salary was higher than most professors in my department too.

I'd say 80+% of research is being done at this scale. A few hundred grand per year, if even that.

  Amortization (time bias):
  -------------------------

We often hear about the big science projects and this creates the notion that it's expensive but it's usually misleading. You might hear news like the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission, but that's spread out over many years. Work began in 2015, construction in late 2019, full assembly in early 2022, and launch in late 2024, where there's 6 years of flight and the budget is for a mission life until late 2034. Amortized that's $5.2bn over 19 years, so $274m/yr ($347m if we conservatively count from 2019).

  Distribution:
  -------------

Most mega projects have a cost that's distributed over many funders. Take CERN. It cost about $10b to build, took 10 years to construct, and costs $1bn/yr to operate. That's distributed through many countries, the largest contributor being Germany, which only accounts for ~20% (so $200m/yr), followed by the UK (15%), France (13%), and Italy (10%). There are also occasional contributions by the US.

  Scale:
  ------

All these numbers are large, but they're also the biggest projects and there's few projects that big. $100m seems like a lot of money to us because we're imagining it in our bank accounts. But that's not the same as money in a government's bank. The US budget is $6.8 Trillion! $100m is 0.0015% of that! In other words, if you had a million dollars to spend each year you're talking about $1.5k (or $1.47 of a $1000 budget). This is not a big ticket item.

===

I'm sure you agree with most of what I've said but I wanted these points "on the record" since we live in a time where we're frequently arguing about $1 from a $10000 budget instead while ignoring the $1000 items. We need to get our heads straight. It's like someone complaining about the cost of your bus ticket while they're buying the latest fully loaded Macbook Pro. I don't think their actual concerned is the budget...

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

#720

Post by guywithahat » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #545

godelski wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. 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,…

I wish more people understood this. An enormous amount of research work sits somewhere between a public jobs program and a waste of resources, and we're at a point where NASA has fallen behind in significant ways. Calling something research doesn't mean we should protect it, and most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry.