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.
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
fragmede · 19h ago
I don't know that this is a good argument for science. We should fund science because we want to discover new things, not because we can draw a dotted line to an ROI. Similarly, we should fund the department of giving poor people money for food. Not because there's an ROI somewhere down the line. There's never gonna be a return on that investment, but we should do that because we're humans and we want to lift our fellow human out of misery.
godelski · 11h ago
Don't be a purist. It clearly hasn't been working out. Sometimes you have to speak the language of others. Especially if you know what real wealth is ;)
Wololooo · 17h ago
Even if I agree with you, the problem is that we always need to justify our existence as researchers and this is even more difficult if the field or ideas are more exotic...
With the US becoming a fascist state in record time, I do not foresee people following your thinking, unfortunately...
eru · 1d ago
> 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, ever.
Where they financed by the government? Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets and say that their return-on-investment was awesome, but that doesn't mean buying lottery tickets is a good idea.
KirinDave · 1d ago
In the interest of historical accuracy, Newton's work was directly and indirectly subsidized by his government as was the university he attended (that later gave him partial scholarship). He invented Calculus while isolated due to the plague, but had already graduated by then with those scholarship bucks from a university chartered by the British government.
A lot of his work occurred while he was what we'd now call a tenured professor of mathematics, again at a universe with an impressive amount of money being donated directly by the British government.
In general, the history of higher learning is the history of governments (or the wealthy people who constitute them) funding research and facilities. You may not like it, but you shouldn't misrepresent history just to make your preferences sound more normal.
WorldMaker · 12h ago
There's also that the Royal Society [0] sponsored some of Newton's work (and Newton was even President of it for a time). That was a group also chartered by the British government (and some centuries financed by it more than other centuries).
(Leibniz had a more complex web of patrons over the course of the decades, including parts of German and French governments and even briefly being a Royal Society fellow. Some of Leibniz's patrons did include private [rich] donors, but it is said that Leibniz was the last scientist/mathematician to find patronage in that way/the last time in history that private donors had shown much interest in direct science/math patronage.)
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.
KirinDave · 3h ago
I wish that more people understood that if they're very wrong/openly lying about the history of scientific achievement, they're probably in the wrong about their conclusions regarding the future of science as well.
And that's Eru (and perhaps you) here. Pubic science continues to make fantastic moves forward, with one notable example being nearly ALL the meaningful research and engineering moving us towards nuclear fusion being based on public research. Historically, major contributors to research almost universally had significant government funding.
It's true that we can gesture to AI research recently as a fruitful place for private research, but even orgs like Deepmind took government grants. Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers.
In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Science consistently betters society as a whole, and it's almost impossible to identify in advance what theoretical or practical breakthroughs in any given field are about to become significant.
autoexec · 5h ago
> most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry.
Can you back that up? Be sure to only include examples of private industry that wasn't supported or backed by the government and didn't depend on prior government advancements to make their advancements
godelski · 1d ago
> That doesn't mean that government investment in science is necessarily a good idea.
Sure, only a Sith deals in absolutes. What's your point? If you inferred from my comment that I think we should just fund everything all willy nilly I'm curious how you think I would resolve this with the lack of infinite money. I'd have to assume we have infinite money if I was suggesting to fund everything, right? And I'd have to be incredibly dumb to think there's infinite money (and resources). Right? I mean I'm dumb, but do you really think I'm that dumb?
> Where they financed by the government?
Yes
> Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets
Do you have anything to comment that isn't reductio ad absurdum?
You're not making an argument, you're just intentionally misunderstanding. Sorry, I'm not going to respond if all you want to do is troll
No comments yet
candu · 16h ago
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 smart people generally prefer to live in places that value and protect science, so it's _also_ an indirect form of geopolitical talent recruitment. (See brain drain + brain gain impacts of science policy, for instance. There's a strong argument to be made that US mid-20th-century dominance in science and engineering was largely driven by a lot of very smart people fleeing Nazi Germany.)
Basic science isn't so much a lottery ticket as a bond with unknown maturity measured in decades, a _very_ high rate of return, a high minimum investment, and dividend-like payouts created by adding skilled scientists, engineers, etc. to your tax base.
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.
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...
MattPalmer1086 · 8h ago
Just a note you may find helpful. I feel your post is too long to be digested and responded to in a forum like this.
Maybe I'm wrong, and if so I apologise! But as soon as I saw the essay like format, I knew I wasn't going to spend time on it. I think shorter points that provoke discussion may work better here.
csa · 7h ago
Just a note you may find helpful.
> I feel your post is too long
It’s about 700 words.
It’s thought through, well-written, neatly organized, and it’s a fine set up for further discussion.
If that’s too long for you on this forum, then I’d probably take a look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.
godelski · 6h ago
Thanks for the support. I know I can be wordy but I also come to HN to have more nuanced conversations than somewhere like Twitter or Reddit. Honestly, I think a lot of political fighting is caused by removal of nuance and the tendency to be rushing for rushing's sake.
godelski · 6h ago
I appreciate the comment, I know I can be a bit wordy. I tried to organize so it's visually easy to get the tldr and each block could tell you the tldr from the first sentence. If you have suggestions of how to distill, I'm open to the feedback. Or if you'd like to add a tldr yourself that's a good contribution.
But also, this is HN. I wouldn't have this conversation on Twitter and I hope we can have more nuanced conversations here, as well as I hope the average user has a bit more intelligence/attention than a place like Reddit. Maybe I'm assuming incorrectly
jacobolus · 1d ago
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.
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> 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 ready to pick up the torch [1].
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 though.
godelski · 1d ago
> 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 now. That's the way JumpCrisscross used it (and I very much don't think they agree that this is how the gov should be working). But the way you're using it is "I'd rather have the $10 tomorrow".
I'm pointing this out because now people are talking past one another. I'm pointing this out because it is a really common pattern ("now" vs "later") that is used and frequently causes miscommunication due to different assumptions about what we want (e.g. "maximize money now" or "maximize money during x period of time"). Though it doesn't always have to do with money.
[1] Be careful to not trivialize this. The numbers are abstract as well as the points in time. Also consider that $1 now might be far more valuable than $10 tomorrow. For example, if you get $1 now you might be able to afford a bus ticket to a location where you can get $1m, but only if you get there today. That's worth a lot more than $10 tomorrow. So we have to be mindful of what conditions actually exist if we want to actually communicate. Unfortunately, these are usually assumed and not communicated... The people that want to just take the money are well aware of this tendency...
ryandrake · 1d ago
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.
godelski · 1d ago
> This administration
I'd like to draw your attention to the last line of [1]
>> The people that want to just take the money are well aware of this tendency...
Do you think I'm talking about "the administration" or "the people who support the administration"?
If you can't differentiate then we'll only be able to talk past one another
JumpCrisscross · 23h ago
> administration is out to grief science and scientists
Is MAGA messaging on these NASA cuts?
My impression is these cuts are being done in the background. The beasts being fed are the military-industrial complex (specifically, its rotation from legacy providers to Silicon Valley) and ICE.
sorcerer-mar · 1d ago
Grievance politics amplified by an assembly of the most astoundingly dumb people you’ve ever seen behind a podium
That’s it! That’s the strategy!
mikeyouse · 1d ago
This apologia for the cuts would be more persuasive if they didn’t come in concert with record-breaking increases to the pentagon budget and historic deficits. There’s no calculation happening here with present or future value, they’re lavishly funding things they like and decimating things they don’t. You don’t place a reality TV ‘star’ as the director of any agency you care about.
godelski · 1d ago
> This apologia for the cut
What gave you the impression I was in favor of the cuts?
watwut · 21h ago
Sanewashing would be better word ... it is kneed jerk tendency with anything republicans and especially Trump related. Even when what they do is clearly crap, people find ways to rationalize it and make it sound better then it is.
Sometimes better amounts to "still bad" as in here, but it is still a bunch of claims that make Conservatives lead by Trump sound much better then what they actually are.
godelski · 18h ago
And you don't think understanding how people delude themselves is good to 1) convince them 2) not fall prone to the same traps?
I'm not excusing anyone. But you are picking fights with people on your own team. So maybe pay closer attention to what people say and not just signaling. Personally I want to fix things, not pick random needless fights. I want to stop chaos, not create more. Picking fights is just what Trump wants you to do
watwut · 15h ago
> And you don't think understanding how people delude themselves is good to 1) convince them 2) not fall prone to the same traps?
I think that if you project wrong motivations on them, you wont understand how they "deluded" themselves nor prevent yourself to fall for the same trap. If their motivation is "scientists are liberals and I want to hurt them" or "I want actually Christian conservative religious state and these institutions are threat to that goal", no amount of theorizing about money saving will get you to the understanding.
If you want to start with understanding someone's motivation, you can not start by projecting best most palatable motivations on them. Nor should you start be projecting worst ones ... but that is NOT where we are or were for years.
For years, conservatives and especially Trump had best possible motivations projected on them. And it only served to their benefit. The whole center ended up not believing their goals, even as they stated or wrote about them regularly. The whole center was busy policing those who actually listened to conservatives and very accurately predicted what they will do. Again and again.
> Personally I want to fix things, not pick random needless fights. I want to stop chaos, not create more.
You are not stopping the chaos by making what is going on more palatable by sane washing it. It just empowers the chaos.
> Picking fights is just what Trump wants you to do
No, Trump want us all to act like republicans do. Never argue with him, enable enable enable. Praise him and kiss his behind.
godelski · 11h ago
You're right that's there's a breath of opinions and values but you're wrong to be applying such a broad brush, especially when painting with hate.
If you hate Trump so much I highly suggest not supporting him
ElevenLathe · 1d ago
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.
godelski · 1d ago
I'm failing to see what you're arguing against from my comment. What did you think I was arguing?
ElevenLathe · 1d ago
jacobolus wrote:
> 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
You, in reply, wrote:
> The real issue is essentially: which would you rather have, $1 now or $10 tomorrow?[1]
I'm saying you're wrong. There is not a choice to be made. We want the $10 tomorrow. No rational person can disagree with this if the person making the choice is the US federal government, who can spend money into existence. If we have some use for $1 now, just spend that $1 into existence too! Then, tomorrow, we'll have the $10 too!
If you agree with the cuts, you must logically agree that they are a bad investment: that $1 today will net us 75 cents tomorrow.
godelski · 1d ago
That wasn't my argument? I think you should look at my last paragraph. It starts with "I'm pointing this out because".
> We want the $10 tomorrow.
Previously I didn't state my position. You *assumed* my position. So allow me to tell you what it is: I agree, $10 tomorrow is better
> No rational person can disagree with this
You really should read [1]
Actually, you really should read my whole comment and be careful to not read things my comment doesn't say.
To circle back,
>> miscommunication due to different assumptions about what we want
A corollary to this is "miscommunication [frequently] happens when we make inaccurate assumptions about the position of others". Let's not go putting words in other people's mouths.
ElevenLathe · 12h ago
I understood your point. I just couldn't fathom any reason it was in this specific discussion other than as a way to legitimize the cuts as one of several "choices" that could be made depending on the assumptions or predilections of the party choosing. In this case, there are no choices to be made (one of the "choices" is literally better in every way and only a fool wouldn't take it), so any suggestion that there are "sides" to this "argument" is de facto an argument in favor of the cuts, regardless of what you claim to believe.
I understand now that you are just making a semi-wanky abstract point about the nature of rhetoric and descisionmaking for its own sake, and I apologize for misunderstanding this.
godelski · 11h ago
I appreciate the apology, even with the snipes. I hope you now can fathom a reason, even if it's hard
ToucanLoucan · 1d ago
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 things, like making it so you can't torture animals quite as much in the pursuit of profits, can't build coal power plants in the center of national parks, and can't dump raw chemical waste into your local wetlands. Utter killjoys they are.
Like, not meaning to be shitty to you in specific, but it's no secret why these agencies are getting targeted. If you say anything the admin doesn't like, or dare to tell people with money that they can't do literally anything they want at all times irrespective of it's effects on broader society, you've got a target on your back.
wat10000 · 1d ago
I think it’s even simpler: government is seen as bad. The military and some law enforcement are excepted, but otherwise, dismantling government agencies is a goal in and of itself.
I listened to way too much Rush Limbaugh in the 90s and none of this stuff is a surprise. Distressing, but exactly what this particular segment of Republicans have been working towards.
hansvm · 1d ago
I could buy that argument if it weren't for the disparity in which organizations are being targeted and the degree to which they're being attacked. Getting rid of all government is just the story they use to appease their base.
WorldMaker · 11h ago
There's definitely a Venn Diagram intersection of "small government means 'no Science' because it is a 'waste' of money" and "Science is bad because it keeps talking about Climate Change", but it's not clearly all one set or the other of that chart (it's a full union applying pressure here).
elcritch · 1d ago
> 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 absurd regulations.
My grandfather fought for years with USFWS to be able to re-build infrastructure for a small town near a popular wilderness area. A small bridge upstream washed away one year and they refused to allow rebuilding it.
The claim was that rebuilding the small bridge would disturb some endangered fish species. So instead hundreds or thousands of vehicles every summer would drive through that small river instead to get to the wilderness area beyond. That created a lot more destruction and impact on the fish. Trucks and vehicles wash off a lot of oil and chemicals like that.
vjvjvjvjghv · 1d ago
“ 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.
ToucanLoucan · 14h ago
I would caveat that further that they seemingly at least in part targeted agencies that were going after his various companies. Coincidentally I'm sure.
ToucanLoucan · 1d ago
Given Space Xs issues in the subsequent years with complying with environmental regulations, it doesn’t seem that ridiculous to me. It’s not as though the shark question was simply posed in a vacuum: it was part of a broader inquiry into potential impacts of launching rockets into space. And Space X wasn’t singled out. Blue Origin had to do the same paperwork, yet bezos didn’t feel the need to whine about it.
elcritch · 23h ago
Well if the regulators are worried about sharks getting hit by a rocket, then they’re writing terrible environmental review requirements. It makes me skeptical that they’re going to do a good job protecting the environment if they’re asking such ill thought out questions.
Personally I’d hope for competent staff to be creating thoughtful valuable environmental impact surveys. Hence why the pushback on these agencies is valuable. Bureaucracies generally need some sort of pressure to, you know, do a competent job.
acdha · 1d ago
NASA is “the elites” in a key area: they’ve done a ton of research confirming climate change is real and impactful. I think the general antipathy for education intersected strongly with the wing of the Republican Party which sees climate change as the enemy both because many of them are funded by fossil fuel companies and because they see all forms of collective action or addressing externalities as an existential threat.
kube-system · 10h ago
> 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.
msgodel · 1d ago
>that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut
The federal government now accepts donations if you don't want the money.
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> federal government now accepts donations if you don't want the money
This is silly. I prefer the money be spent on things that have a larger ROI, collectively, than I can attain individually. Destroying the money doesn't achieve that aim.
msgodel · 1d ago
Well, the rest of us disagree. You need consensus for public institutions and no one on the left or the right has been willing to build that.
jacobolus · 1d ago
Actually, the "rest of us" largely agree, as reflected in the laws our elected representatives have established. We have collectively appropriated the money and set up the institutional framework for spending it. Folks smashing down that system are doing a significant part of it illegally, with no credible justification or public support, in several recent cases in contemptuous violation of direct court orders.
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> the rest of us disagree
Irrelevant to the silliness of suggesting destroying money as a solution.
saratogacx · 1d ago
The federal government has, pretty much always, accepted donations, but recently the time and effort were spent to make those contributions available via digital instead of the old check and mail method of yesteryear.
harimau777 · 1d ago
I'd definitely donate if it meant that billionaires also had to give a proportionate amount of their wealth.
throwawayq3423 · 1d ago
The current government would take any money you give them and give it back to rich people in the form of tax cuts.
So no, I don't want to Venmo cash to somebody who doesn't need it.
msgodel · 16h ago
That has always effectively been how government programs work, even if they launder it through poor people and immigrants first.
Supermancho · 1d ago
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.
potato3732842 · 1d ago
>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.
This isn't cogent, IMO, since Republicans control all 3 arms of government. Who would be the target of intentional public outrage? Also, this is far less incendiary than the cuts to public benefits.
largbae · 1d ago
I think GP is suggesting that NASA administrators might have an incentive to apply budget cuts to programs that get more public outrage. However I would imagine human spaceflight to be the more visible type of program for the average voter.
dehrmann · 1d ago
Bureaucracies like to grow, and they're very resistant to cuts, so they become inefficient entities poorly suited to current needs. Private companies have competition as a force that forces some amount of accountability, but I have yet to hear a strategy for effectively discontinuing work the government shouldn't be doing.
psadauskas · 8h ago
> Private companies have competition as a force that forces some amount of accountability
[citation needed]
Private companies these days just buy all their competitors to minimize accountability and maximize shareholder returns.
kamaal · 1d ago
>>This is a loss of capacity that will set the US back a generation.
Many people grossly underestimate restarting a stopped process which took tremendous inertia to get rolling at the first place.
For all practical purposes its almost like you permanently lose the ability.
cyphertruck · 1d ago
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.
goku12 · 1d ago
> but the reality is not as it is being portrayed.
This is exactly how anyone would describe your reply. Your claim is so bizzare and its logic so convoluted that the only reason I can imagine for it is political motivation. But I could be wrong and don't want to get into a flamewar. So let's ignore the reasons and reassess the logic instead. Most of the counter I can come up with are variations of what the other commenter replied, so I will leave that to them. Instead, let's look at why your argument never pans out.
Private companies always look for short to medium term profits, since it affects their balance sheets and ultimately their survival. That constraint isn't favorable for scientific research and science missions, because there is a long lead time for the research results to be converted into a commercially viable products. Some companies with a large product portfolio and steady profits still do some research, as long as it isn't too costly or time consuming. An example is the pharma industry.
But science involving the biosphere, atmosphere, astronomy/astrophysics, space, interplanetary missions etc are on the other end of that spectrum - extremely costly and no commercialization for the foreseeable future. The only way private industries are going to do it is if the government funds them with short term profits - in which case, it's the government's program, not the industry's. Even Musk's Mars dream is dependent on government funding in that manner, though his intent isn't science either. What makes you think the private industry will take it upon themselves to fund and conduct research that makes no economic sense?
quantified · 10h ago
SpaceX launches stuff. What scientific instruments do they design, what findings do they obtain? Anything beyond just how to launch stuff?
jrflowers · 1d ago
> they launch most of NASA's science missions, which counts
Exactly. Like if I am an uber driver and I bring a surgeon to a hospital, it counts as me doing surgery since the most important part of surgery is the process of driving to the place where it happens
mmmlinux · 11h ago
so ambulances do nothing, got it.
ericvolp12 · 1d ago
The article doesn't really do this justice, it's not really "opting to leave" it's that entire divisions inside the Science side of NASA have had their projects defunded and so all the work the people in those labs were doing is now gone. They're being asked to leave voluntarily so they don't have to be "fired" but all their work and resources are gone and they couldn't stay if they wanted to.
A friend of mine had her division's headcount cut by >80% that was all research focused and building instruments for deep space observation. No one is hiring people to do that in the private sector. Dozens of astrophysics PhDs in that division alone are now without work and with no real prospects doing anything related to what they've dedicated their entire lives to (and accepted modest salaries as civil servants to do).
goku12 · 1d ago
Pardon my ignorance. But isn't it better to be laid off or fired than to resign, since the former entitles you to a few months of severance pay? Or is it different somehow under these circumstances?
lgregg · 13h ago
I’m not sure about this round but I know someone that resigned out of the DOGE wave in Homeland and she got 9 months severance. I would assume something relatively similar.
me-vs-cat · 5h ago
In the US, there is no general entitlement to severance beyond a specific employer's policies, a worker's or union's contract (if any) with that employer, or any one-time offer (usually called a voluntary layoff or voluntary resignation) from that employer.
lawlessone · 11h ago
They'll do this now and then act shocked when some of these ex nasa people end up working in Europe or China lol
catigula · 11h ago
That doesn't sound legal.
nosianu · 10h ago
There is worse going on in other areas, for example "China Recruiting Former R.A.F. Pilots to Train Its Army Pilots, U.K. Says"
It comes down to money and private interests dominating Western politics. It has bad but also good sides. Human conflict used to be about extermination a few thousand years ago, that is what I think of when I read such headlines, such things can actually also be seen as progress. We now have priorities other than our tribe or nation, that has good sides too. I like the Napoleonic war story where Napoleon gave a medal to a British scientist, Humphry Davy.
While bad for the nation, I try to see it as a mixed bag that people from the top down are... flexible.
The price we pay is, possibly, worse outcomes in conflicts. What we gain is that after conflicts end we get back to normal life - with one another - very quickly and relatively easily.
catigula · 2h ago
A lot of your "we" seems to mean literally that your elites aren't loyal to you whereas other elites are loyal to the "us".
That puts you in a uniquely disadvantageous position.
samrus · 10h ago
For NASA? I dont see why not. Unless they were doing something related to natsec
bilekas · 10h ago
why wouldn't it be though?
daemonologist · 10h ago
EAR/ITAR restrictions maybe? China at least is ITAR restricted and has a lot of entities on the EAR list. I'm not a lawyer though; no idea what regulations you'd actually be subject to.
fareesh · 10h ago
don't they all sign a document saying it's all classified tech?
Jtsummers · 10h ago
Not necessarily. Not all the work for the government is classified, and over classification is technically, which means it still happens and is mostly ignored, against the law.
And having worked on some classified systems doesn't preclude employment in related fields. It does restrict what you can share, of course.
aqme28 · 10h ago
Sure there are probably NDAs to keep specific tech from moving, but that doesn't mean the talent that invented the tech can't move.
schmidtleonard · 11h ago
Even without that factor, making deep cuts to research funding right before Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo seems like a bad move.
dylan604 · 11h ago
If you were acting on behalf of the other players in the sequel, these would be great moves.
lawlessone · 10h ago
I no longer think he's deliberately acting on their behalf.
He's just so stupid that's equivalent to that.
dylan604 · 10h ago
For those that worked so diligently to put him in place, the result is the same nonetheless.
lawlessone · 9h ago
Absolutely. :/
antonvs · 11h ago
Turns out people like Trump and Gabbard might be smarter than they appear. It's just a pity that they use that against the US.
Gud · 11h ago
They aren’t.
pavlov · 10h ago
They’re not smart, but both of them have been cultivated by Russia for decades.
For a long time Trump has been repeating Russian talking points like he invented them. The best asset is the one who never sees how he’s being played.
Only recently Trump has realized that Putin doesn’t actually do what he says, and you can tell he is genuinely surprised by this revelation.
kube-system · 10h ago
Trump is simply a narcissist and socialite who has broad ideas about how he thinks the world should work, but like anyone at a high leadership position, surrounds himself with other people he trusts to execute on the details.
In this case, all of the downsizing that has been happening is right out of the Heritage Foundation playbook, literally.
And those plans are largely a manifestation of Kevin Roberts' political beliefs. He, in his book, has said things such as:
> "many of America's institutions...need to be burned"
This executive has been criticized as using a hatchet and not a scalpel in their downsizing options precisely because their fundamental driving belief is that all of it is waste and abuse. They don't want any of it.
Trasmatta · 11h ago
We've been in Cold War II for awhile now
bpodgursky · 11h ago
Eh. I'm not saying it's a great scheme, but these are almost all people taking retirement a couple years early. China is not interested in stealing 1980s NASA tech, and Europe aerospace is a non-player.
coryrc · 10h ago
The way you say that more supports the idea these people should have been laid off a while ago.
I bet plenty have that useful "unwritten institutional knowledge" that could help newer programs. (F.ex. instructions for a nuclear waste storage said to use kitty litter, but didn't say it was because it was a cheap source of bentonite clay; someone substituted some modern paper variant and caused a small nuclear incident).
gtirloni · 10h ago
Ageism at its best. Senior folks are stuck in time and only know 80's tech, right ?
bitlax · 11h ago
I actually want that guy gone yesterday.
rockskon · 1d ago
NASA has been downsizing a lot.
Friend of mine is a contractor for NASA who has been trained as a parts engineer for sourcing and testing electronic components that go into satellites and spacecrafts will be out of a job in a few months as her entire branch is eliminating all contractor positions.
Now she has a specialized skillset that isn't very readily transferable to other local companies and industries.
Sucks. Can't imagine she's the only one from NASA facing this crisis.
Robotbeat · 1d ago
The satellite industry in the US is larger than ever, FWIW.
Between Starlink, OneWeb, Kuiper, plus a gazillion startups like Astranis, K2 Space, etc, not to mention defense satellites, there has never been a time when more satellites have been launched by the U.S.
I think your friend will be fine. The real issue is the capability loss for NASA.
rockskon · 1d ago
So - physically relocating is not an appealing prospect given she's a house and a spouse with a local job.
Is it typical for companies in the satellite design/manufacturing space for parts/electrical components engineers to be able to work remotely outside of travelling for inspections/supplier audits/component testing?
harimau777 · 1d ago
Doesn't a lot of that require you to live in Texas?
nomel · 10h ago
Geographic hubs for a specialized profession has always been the case. Tech -> California (or Texas these days). Fashion/Finance -> NY. Movies -> Hollywood, etc. It's why most people live where they do: you follow the money. Truly first world problems.
TechDebtDevin · 1d ago
I think that's what this is, the 4k people in NASA probably never would have quit (great benefits or whatever), maybe the strategist at the top (whether they are right or not) think its better for this talent to be concentrated at private firms? And tbf, the private sector does move fast :/
ineedasername · 1d ago
There is no strategist at the top thinking about where this talent is best positioned to do good work.
TechDebtDevin · 10h ago
Its literally elon and cronies, wdym?
maxloh · 1d ago
I know that people wanted to stay in their own country. However, she could likely get a good position in the space industry in Europe.
The bottom line is, she would be very likely to get a good salary, even better than she did in the US, in China, Russia, or India, which are desperately seeking space specialists with experience in more advanced technologies.
It is a shame that the US couldn't even keep their payroll, forcing them to leave the country and flow to its enemies.
ponector · 18h ago
>> in the space industry in Europe
I bet they are not willing to take a huge paycut. Also the language barrier may be an issue.
interactivecode · 16h ago
It's quite easy to learn proper English if you're American. I have friends who successfully accomplished the feat
ponector · 14h ago
What if they don't want to move to Ireland?
olddustytrail · 1d ago
Both India and China hold Most Favoured Nation status with the USA. That hardly marks them as enemies.
notahacker · 1d ago
"enemies" is a strong word, especially for India. But NASA is explicitly banned from cooperating with Chinese agencies by law, so it's not like the US hasn't established a position of not waiting China to have access to NASA knowhow...
cosmicgadget · 1d ago
That's a trade status.
maxloh · 1d ago
Yeah. I admit that statement is somewhat overstated for India.
However, China is now the country with the most potential to engage in a full-scale war with the US. It was Russia, but it is now stuck with Ukraine, and probably for years ahead.
EasyMark · 1d ago
China is most definitely an adversary, bordering on enemy, of the USA, other than trade we really are in a cold war with them by all measures and many aspects. Culture, education (attracting best students), Asian interests (Taiwan/Japan in particular), government styles (recently arguable however with Trump's actions moving us closer to autocracy), and the list goes on. Very little of that is going on between us and India.
archontes · 14h ago
NASA has been downsized with a machete.
And Russell Vought is holding the weapon.
orochimaaru · 1d ago
Why won’t the skillset be transferable to places like space x, Amazon kuiper, blue origin, or any of the big defense tech or start ups (eg anduril)?
rockskon · 1d ago
Considering her coworkers are calling the mass contractor layoffs "getting DOGEd", SpaceX is less than appealing.
Similar sentiment is felt about any other organization run by people who are seen as having had a hand in kneecapping NASA - working for their companies is not appealing. Perhaps her views will change after she's had more time to process the sting of the layoff notice.
And her prior work for the DoD left her with an extraordinarily bad impression of the culture. Admittedly she'd only worked at a single Navy Yard and different branches in different services can have different cultures, but nevertheless - the DoD is not appealing either. Depending on the results of her job search, that might change.
For Amazon Kuiper - no relevant roles are available in the region and, as far as what's listed on the website, there's no jobs that allow for working remotely outside of relevant travel.
Blue Origin...same issue as with Kuiper - remote work doesn't seem to be a thing and they've no local presence with relevant jobs available.
natebc · 8h ago
These are (mostly) scientists that have been doing science for a science organization.
Those companies are transportation companies when it comes to space.
kylecordes · 1d ago
Likely so, but you have probably listed a bunch of organizations already utterly swamped with eager and qualified job candidates relative to their hiring numbers.
skissane · 1d ago
I totally believe they get swamped with eager candidates, but highly experienced ones?
Someone ex-NASA may well have deep experience in certain specific areas which few other candidates could claim.
The thing about a voluntary "deferred resignation program" – the people most likely to take it are those who are confident they can find good opportunities somewhere else. If you didn't have that confidence, you'd be much less likely to sign on to it.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
>a bunch of organizations already utterly swamped with eager and qualified job candidates relative to their hiring numbers
So....the same challenges that everyone working in the private sector has? What am I missing here?
crote · 1d ago
Imagine if Google or Apple suddenly went bust. What do you think that would do to the job market in San Francisco?
rockskon · 21h ago
NASA is still around. The layoff announcements for contractors at certain locations have been staggered as far as I know.
Still - it appears to be a tremendously hurdle for her to find alternate employment with her skillset in parts engineering without physically relocating - which would necessitate selling her house and her husband finding employment at the new region as well.
FirmwareBurner · 19h ago
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.
soulofmischief · 11h ago
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 to protect these people. We failed on the former and now it's disrupting the latter.
Deciding whether I should care about another group based on whether they care about my own predicament is a straight path to evil.
skissane · 4h ago
> 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.
Do doctors really belong on that list? In my personal experience-I’m not a doctor, but lots of people in my family are, including my mother and brother (and when she finishes med school, my sister too)-I really don’t get the impression doctors are poorly paid at all. If we talk about those with established careers (so not junior doctors), the poorly paid ones are still earning twice what the average person does, and the better paid ones are off the charts. On average, medicine pays better than software engineering.
Oh, and I’m in Australia-in the US, medical salaries are even better than they are in Australia. Like take what people get paid in Australia and add 50%. Yes, American doctors would owe more in student loans-but when you are on US$400K, and the average US medical school debt is under US$300K, how long is it going to take you to pay it off?
FirmwareBurner · 9h ago
>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?
soulofmischief · 7h ago
What would handing money over to my government without any strings attached do?
In America we ostensibly participate in a representative democracy founded on the sentiment of no taxation without representation, and so our first duty is to be politically involved by educating ourselves holistically, voting appropriately for our local, state and federal representatives, participating in accompanying community building, wealth and knowledge dissemination in order to create and maintain the institutions which I mentioned in my previous comment.
harimau777 · 1d ago
It could be that those companies aren't located somewhere they are willing to live or it could be that they don't want to work for companies owned by Elon or Bezos.
TechDebtDevin · 1d ago
Well this antecdote kind of gets in the way of the other antecdotes, that NASA is being privatized. Maybe this is just a way of forcing specialized labor into certain outfits (Space X, Costa Mesa, SF.. )
MOARDONGZPLZ · 1d ago
Costa Mesa seems like a random addition here?
pklausler · 11h ago
For obvious reasons, the people who are most able to find a good gig elsewhere are the most likely to elect to go do so; and they tend to be the people that you'll miss more.
indoordin0saur · 11h ago
Most of these are just retirees. People who wanted to work at SpaceX over NASA are likely already doing so
BurningFrog · 10h ago
True, but it can also be those that dislike the job the most, and they tend to be the people that you'll miss less.
pklausler · 10h ago
Why would they still be there?
kortilla · 11h ago
Im not sure this applies. Good people at NASA were already capable of easily finding higher pay in the private sector.
People work at NASA because they believe in the mission. So if they are leaving now they either stopped believing in the future of NASA because of this or they were money motivated and sucked.
dylan604 · 11h ago
> People work at NASA because they believe in the mission.
And what exactly is left of the mission now? Not much to keep working for in that regard
antonvs · 11h ago
The goal seems to be to turn NASA into an agency that manages (read: funnels tax dollars to) private contractors.
kortilla · 11h ago
80% of it? The goals of NASA haven’t been fundamentally altered
eagerpace · 1d ago
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 in the room and is a complete disaster. It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better. You can debate some of the specifics, sure, but if all this current state of uncertainty brings is a clean slate and new ways of thinking in 4 years, that’s better IMHO than looking back 4 years from now watching NASA brute force a token moon landing on the back of ancient technology. Which they may still do!
justin66 · 1d ago
> 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 in the room and is a complete disaster. It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better.
It’s more accurate to say that Congress needs an overhaul. Over the years NASA administrators have pushed back on SLS to the fullest extent you’d expect, but it’s not their call how Congress allocates money.
Losing career managers, scientists and engineers isn’t going to fix any of the things you want to see fixed.
toomuchtodo · 1d ago
It’s going to kill institutional knowledge and be so expensive to repair after regime change.
nomel · 1d ago
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: you need to restart every some years, to not stagnate.
From what I've seen, if you want to stamp out a young engineers creativity, start them working in a big org.
scoreandmore · 1d ago
And did you stick around to see what happens after they go full tabula rasa? I have: they fall so far behind they close up shop. The proper response is to move slowly and intentionally and use indicators. Like ‘design thinking’, with prototyping and feedback and incremental feedback, not burn shit to the ground because planning is too hard mentality. But I realize that’s what shareholders demand. And now that gov’t is being run like a business, prepare to see bankruptcies.
Fortunately other, more rational countries, will fill the gaps. They’ve just been complacent because the US was on its game for so long. Especially the ESA.
No comments yet
viraptor · 1d ago
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.
nomel · 1d ago
> 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.
bluGill · 1d ago
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.
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johnnyanmac · 1d ago
In my eyes, institutional knowledge is figuring out what things do NOT work, not what did back then. When you lose that, you're wasting years or even decades hitting the exact same pitfalls the old guard hit once upon a time. Many truly bright minds aren't those asserting how this was the best method and then burying their heads in the sand when other ideas come out.
My time working with some of the brightest minds in my industry taught me that they aren't necessaily some visionary, nor super genius, nor even some workaholic putting 20+ hours a day into their craft (though I have met a few I would describe as such). The gap between me and them wasn't over some raw intellect. It was many times a matter of me thinking of an idea and them talking about how that was tried 5-20 years ago and why that lead down a huge rabbit hole.
nomel · 11h ago
> 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.
johnnyanmac · 10h ago
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 that.
>This was put in my first comment with severe intent, that many seemed to have missed.
The comment itself definitely reveals more than a light suggestion.
nomel · 10h ago
> 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.
johnnyanmac · 9h ago
>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.
saltcured · 1d ago
I think you are using a non-standard definition of institutional knowledge that begs the question in the rest of your posts.
The standard phrase "institutional knowledge" merely refers to knowledge and skills that are carried by members of the organization. This is often much more than what is formally codified into the processes and training materials. As such, it can lead to loss of capability when there is too much turnover.
You seem to be conflating it with some other kind of bureaucratic conservatism or group-think. While that is a common dysfunction of long-running organizations, I think it is an orthogonal characteristic.
supplied_demand · 1d ago
== What you end up with will always be better than what you started with.==
That is quite the absolute statement. Could you share some data to back this up?
nomel · 1d ago
Sorry it wasn't clear enough, but I was paraphrasing Jim Keller. See the several Lex Fridman episodes with him, where he talks about it. The success with his projects would probably be the data you're looking for.
No comments yet
JeremyNT · 1d ago
But what are we even doing here? We have an entire political party that is anti science. This isn't some temporary setback, it's an ideology.
Is the future going to be completely defunding science for 4 (or 8) years and then whipsawing back to normal levels once the republicans lose power?
It seems like as long as the parties are close to popularity of each other and one party is explicitly anti science there is no way to build anything sustainable. This is no way to run a country.
overfeed · 1d ago
> Ever org I've worked for slowly became unable to innovate
There's more to life than "innovation", but what you say tracks, I was part of an organization that became extremely innovative but went bust in the process.
> we have Space X.
Which is amazing for earth-orbit commercial launches, but doesn't move the needle for the many other things NASA concerns itself with, like research as mentioned elsewhere.
supplied_demand · 1d ago
== if you want to stamp out a young engineers creativity, start them working in a big org.==
Jim Keller’s own biography kind of dispels this notion. He worked at DEC for 16 years when he was a young engineer (24-40 years old).
nomel · 11h ago
I'm not sure dot-com era DEC had much stagnation or institutional knowledge that wasn't continuously overrun, nor would it be comparable to most big orgs these days.
supplied_demand · 3h ago
He worked there starting in 1982. When do you think the dot-com era started?
imperfect_light · 1d ago
This seems similar to the "let's just rebuild from scratch" impulse that has been tried so many times on very large complicated systems and often, although not always, fails.
monkeyelite · 1d ago
I think the institutional knowledge from the golden age is already gone.
And the normalisation of the language of totalitarianism continues.
I don’t disagree, but it’s grim.
Aurornis · 1d ago
In the case of NASA, they could stand to shed a lot of the institutional structure they’ve built up. When institutional knowledge becomes more about navigating bureaucracy than doing engineering, something needs to break.
My dream outcome would be that they shrink down the bureaucracy massively, retire a lot of the career middle managers who make sure nothing ever moves too fast and no project is allowed to run lean, and then raise pay for the remaining people to attract some of the private sector talent that could infuse some new knowledge. The few people I know with SpaceX experience are not at all happy with the work environment there, but the pay and pace of a place like NASA aren’t an option for them.
godelski · 1d ago
> It’s more accurate to say that Congress needs an overhaul.
It's also worth mentioning that this is a big reason NASA is so expensive. There's a lot of contracts and so NASA actually has contractors in every single state. They even brag about it[0], which should be a good hint to you that it is political. This makes is a bit of a wealth distribution system. That's either good or bad depending on your perspective and what you think the main goals are...
But there's a few programs that have these types of problems, not just NASA. IMO, there's probably more efficient ways to meet each goal, by decoupling the problem. But either way, we can't solve "the problem" unless we actually recognize what it is (and there's a lot more than what I've just mentioned)
> It’s more accurate to say that Congress needs an overhaul. Over the years NASA administrators have pushed back on SLS to the fullest extent you’d expect, but it’s not their call how Congress allocates money.
They don't call it the Senate Launch System for nothing
eagerpace · 1d ago
That’s a great point. I think it’s just trying to boil the ocean.
vkou · 1d ago
I think it's more accurate to say that our oligarchs need an overhaul. Some of the worst people who are actively working against the public are consistently ending up in positions of incredible, unchecked power.
Aurornis · 1d ago
> It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better.
I’ve worked with a few former NASA employees now.
They all said the same thing: There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks. Getting anything done was impossible because you had to navigate webs of org structure and process that had been designed to make work and jobs for people, not to deliver results.
My one ex-NASA coworker got a lot of mileage out of telling people he worked for NASA, putting it on his LinkedIn, and mentioning it when he introduced himself to new people. People respect the name. It was a stark contrast to how he described his actual time there.
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks
Which do you think takes a severance package?
aerostable_slug · 1d ago
I share your experience.
The national labs are also a lot like this.
camcil · 1d ago
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 employ, are the ones that are going to leave- leaving behind nothing but the fat.
ACCount36 · 1d ago
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.
mulmen · 1d ago
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.
ACCount36 · 1d ago
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.
mulmen · 1d ago
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.
jebarker · 1d ago
> 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.
robertlagrant · 1d ago
> 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.
jebarker · 1d ago
I agree that inspiration is probably not a great metric for many tax payer funded organizations including DoD and NASA
potato3732842 · 1d ago
>People aren't inspired by safe shipping lanes.
Captain Phillips was a pretty good movie.
giantg2 · 1d ago
"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 past year. Chances are many people couldn't name something NASA achieved in the past year. Would it be at the 2% number? I don't know.
I'm not saying one is better than the other. I think both should look for budget inefficiency, but until those are identified I wouldn't propose budget cuts. But it does seem that the NASA missions could be more inspiring recently.
lenkite · 1d ago
Hello,
US Military FY 2024 enacted budget: ≈ $842 billion
VS
NASA FY 2024 enacted budget: ≈ $24.9 billion
That is a ~35x multiplier. By bog-standard logical implication your question answers itself.
mrobins · 1d ago
How many people on HN have a James Webb wallpaper?
giantg2 · 1d ago
I don't think James Webb was launched in the past year. Even so, HN is a tiny percentage of the country and focused on STEM. I would expect the number of people with a James Webb wallpaper nationally to be under 2%.
freddi333 · 1d ago
How many people have a fighter jet?
Hikikomori · 1d ago
Clearly NASA should do more stadium flyovers.
giantg2 · 1d ago
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.
SalmoShalazar · 1d ago
I’m sorry but this is asinine. All of the “positive interactions” you listed are literally propaganda events to increase the palatability of the US military and encourage enrolment.
giantg2 · 1d ago
Yes, and propaganda to put the public on it's side would benefit NASA in it's budget battles.
CivBase · 1d ago
> 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.
eagerpace · 1d ago
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 something like starship were operational. NASA dragging its feet for decades, building silly things likes SLS, trying to find token uses to justify it, doesn’t inspire me anymore.
nytesky · 1d ago
I’m afraid I don’t understand how Starship could help proliferate JWST. It was launched with Ariana 5 which is a mature launch system.
The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.
eagerpace · 1d ago
So many ways. The current paradigm is that it gets one chance and it has to be perfect. Starship (which I'm only referencing as the bleeding-edge launch vehicle) compared to Ariane 5 could be a fraction of half the cost, with double the volume and 4x the mass. With those constraints removed the science missions had a lot more flexibility in their design.
nytesky · 1d ago
JWST cost $10B. The launch was expensive at $1.5B; but getting that down to $750M won’t really change the availability.
eagerpace · 11h ago
I'm a firm believer that if the mass and volume constraints were relaxed the design of such an instrument could be greatly simplified.
nytesky · 7h ago
Hmm, I didn’t consider that, very good point. With 10x the volume, maybe the mirror and sunshine origami could have been avoided or much simpler. I wonder how to figure out how much the cost was because of that complicated mechanics…
bradyd · 10h ago
The Europa Clipper mission saved $3B+ just by switching from SLS to Falcon Heavy.
mulmen · 1d ago
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.
potato3732842 · 1d ago
>Then a few hours later it turned negative.
Happens all the time.
Europe vs us east vs us west.
cma · 1d ago
Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?
BobbyJo · 1d ago
Putting the first people on the moon, the first people on any foreign celestial body, as a show of power during the cold war isn't what I'd consider "token".
Putting people on the moon today is a lot less substantive, and doing it with decades old technology makes it even less so.
I see the correlation you're trying to draw: "neither is of any practical use", but I think even that ignores the very deliberate effects the first space race had on the USSR.
eagerpace · 1d ago
I’m speaking of SLS. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
waz0wski · 1d ago
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
spauldo · 1d ago
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 much congressional meddling has gone on, though.
eagerpace · 1d ago
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.
NooneAtAll3 · 1d ago
SLS is elephant in the room - but Mars Sample Return is arguably even worse
Money for SLS is separate part of the budget, its mismanagement causes reputational damage - MSR budget is part of NASA probe budget, mismanagement there causes stall, worse performances and cancellations for AWFUL amount of other projects
ACCount36 · 1d ago
MSR as NASA's JPL envisioned it was a disaster. But there was a chance that someone like Rocket Lab could actually make it work without breaking the bank.
lupusreal · 1d ago
MSR has indeed been a mess. I think it's pretty obvious that NASA has been trying to instill a "sunk costs" mentality in Congress, and it's not working out the way they wanted.
MSR is a fine enough concept though, I think Rocket Lab's proposal to get it done is sound and the government should take them up on the offer. If nothing else, the money to Rocket Lab for MSR development would help to make Rocket Lab a more viable SpaceX competitor, which should pay off for the US government in the long run.
reactordev · 1d ago
Anytime you have subcontractors of the subcontractor of the prime contract holder, you’re going to get construction projects that go 20 years. It’s totally a jobs program. Job security and predictable pay outs.
The entire space coast of Florida was built on this, from Kennedy Space Center down to Jupiter, FL.
eagerpace · 1d ago
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.
rtkwe · 1d ago
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.
zevets · 1d ago
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
mschuster91 · 1d ago
Even if it would work out to distribute the pork across the continent, the fact is that all this splitting introduces logistical cost (shipping) as well as development costs (red tape needed to approve any change). SpaceX doesn't have any of that crap, and Tesla (with its famous ditching of the old school "auto makers and parts suppliers" ecosystem) either.
reactordev · 1d ago
One of the stipulations for SpaceX to even have contracts was they had to support the space coast. They do. Launches from Kennedy are frequent and the drone platform the rockets land on are stationed there. SpaceX is the new NASA and like you said, they don’t have the red tape of having to justify parts manufacturing across the states.
The sad reality is in the US, too many towns were built around a very specific and niche business. Coal in the Appalachian mountains, NASA and the space coast, Pittsburgh Steel… it’s a community plan that failed and yet is still being used today. Woe to those that move/live there.
AlecSchueler · 1d ago
> but if all this current state of uncertainty brings is a clean slate and new ways of thinking in 4 years, that’s better IMHO
Isn't the greater likelihood that delivery of service will drop as a result of the cuts and they'll point to this to justify nullifying the entire programme?
amy_petrik · 1d ago
>I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006.
The universe... what a concept. You know, the universe is a little bit like the human hand. For example, you have Grumann's center right here and then you have Undiscovered Worlds and uh, um and Sector 8 and up here is Tittleman's Crest so you can kinda picture it's a little bit like a leaf or uhh, umm, it's not a bowl. Do you know that when you look at a planet and you see that light, that planet's not even there! that's just a light, that's just your neighbor shining a flashlight right into your yard looking for coons, and he says "what are you doing in my backyard? with that flashlight?" and i told him "i'm shining, i'm shining in the window so I can teach your son about the universe" he said "get out of my yard and why are you communicating to my son? why are you in all black? behind my bushes shining a light into my house?" and i said "i'm teaching your son about the universe! i'm shining a light, shining a light right in there and exploring his room as he's looking out and exploring the universe!" i turn the light off and i see your son go to bed and i turn the light back on and i do swirls on his wall like a comet's tail. i do this every night with your son.
parasense · 1d ago
The SLS was a good idea, and it's actually a great rocket. However you are correct in saying it turned into a huge program for the old school rocket industrial complex. I think the private sector currently does this better, or it's certainly debatable. However, I think it's a mistake to say only the private sector can do this kind of thing optimally. There is some multiverse in the timelines where government contractors create an industrial rocket production line that quickly and cheaply stamps out heavy lift rockets. Granted, it's easier said than done, but it still doesn't have to be so expensive. Clearly the expensive part should be the R&D with the industrial production parts being jigged, automated, and fully optimized. The SLS obviously went another route by making the rocket production bespoke with non optimal, manual labor, etc... that kind of protection is acceptable for one-off science mission payloads, but not heavy lift....
Anyhoo, NASA letting so many people resign is good if your opinion is such that lowering government expenditure is a good thing. So long as the exit package is comparable to retirement package these government employees would have got otherwise. My guess is the resignation package has great near term performance but low long term (retirement) performance, making it a great option for younger workers able to pivot to new careers.
No comments yet
EasyMark · 1d ago
NASA like most government agencies could use a good, independent audit. That's not what this is. The DOGE lie was all about going in with pre-determined goals to reduce and to embarrass every org that they "audited". It was to "prove" MAGA world's criticism even if they were completely wrong (and the vast majority are). MAGA world "leaders" think that the US's role as a lead in science and top universities needs to be damaged in order to reduce our role in the world. It can then attempt to repair it with private tech billionaire solutions that are under their 100% control, instead of having to deal with government between them and profits.
singron · 1d ago
Are NASA employees even a significant part of SLS? Doesn't the bulk of the money go to Boeing and Northrup Grumman?
orbisvicis · 1d ago
If only you could offer congress deferred resignations...
cosmicgadget · 1d ago
No one would take it since the stock (trading on proprietary info) plan is so good.
arccy · 1d ago
isn't congress on fixed time contracts already....
Yeul · 1d ago
It depends on what you want out of the space program.
Americans seem to expect lots of flag waving and spaceships. Less fundamental science.
DiogenesKynikos · 1d ago
> Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be.
NASA's science missions have been incredible.
The James Webb Space Telescope, a 6.5-meter-diameter infrared telescope at Lagrange Point 2 that can measure the atmospheric chemistry of planets orbiting other stars and measure the spectra of galaxies that were around 10 billion years ago.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars by being lowered to the ground from a rocket-powered "sky-crane." It was powered by a radioactive battery, has been driving around and taking measurements for more than a decade, and has shown that Mars was likely habitable billions of years ago.
What kind of inspiration do you feel is lacking there?
jordanb · 1d ago
> SLS is the elephant in the room and is a complete disaster
SLS isn't great but it does.. you know.. work.
perihelions · 1d ago
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: a very, very cheap Falcon Heavy launched it instead.
Which it was capable of doing all along—Congress and NASA lied about this, misled the public, to make it appear that their jobs-creating, pork-barrel project was serving some genuine need NASA had. It wasn't! They had alternatives all along—they were pretending they didn't.
When you read about these things, you have to know all the actors you're getting information from, and what motives they have to mislead you.
There's not a single real mission in NASA's budget, or conceivable future budget, that needs an SLS—full stop. Sole exception being the moon project, which was created with the express purpose of finding a problem SLS would be the only answer for (and even that's now in doubt, what with Starship).
SJC_Hacker · 1d ago
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.
pklausler · 10h ago
What was the one failure of the Saturn V that you mention? If you're thinking of Apollo 13, that took place after the Apollo stack had ditched all of the Saturn V stages.
ACCount36 · 1d ago
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.
Any argument that is filled with this much ragebait should be dismissed out of hand.
chadcmulligan · 14h ago
I was hoping it was nonsense and someone would point out the errors, no such luck so far.
shkkmo · 9h ago
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.
chadcmulligan · 7h ago
good to know, but the outlook for success is still the same? just the blame is not only NASA.
shkkmo · 7h ago
Artemis and SLS have many problems but I would look elsewhere than that article if you want an understanding of what they are and why they exist.
eagerpace · 1d ago
Does it? Do we want to repeat what we did 50 years ago or do we want to do something better and stay this time?
jordanb · 1d ago
"Meet your mission objectives on the first try" is a pretty reasonable - if low-bar - definition of "works".
belter · 1d ago
Except for the under powered orbits but that is a whole other issue.
While it's hard to get the truth out of SpaceX but there's reliable evidence that the block one starship wasn't anywhere near its mass to orbit projections which is why they rushed the block two design which stopped their progress practically cold.
lupusreal · 1d ago
It doesn't work, not for Moon missions. It was never designed for Moon missions in the first place, the original plan was unspecified "deep space" missions without any clear plan of what it would actually be doing (because it's actual purpose is to keep money flowing to old Shuttle contractors.)
Consequently, it can't do a Moon mission like the Saturn V could, it requires the idiotic nonsense that is the NHRO, which will endanger astronauts because it can't get Orion (which is a whole other can of pork) into a low lunar orbit. It also can't handle the lander, so now Artemis has to count on SpaceX and/or Blue Origin for that, which is probably what you're alluding to not working. But if those don't work, then neither does Artemis and then how can you say SLS works?
Another problem with SLS is it's expensive AF and has a terrible launch cadence. Maybe you think that doesn't really matter, but it is for those reasons that NASA isn't going to test Orion again before putting astronauts on it. The last time they tested Orion, to verify the design and modelling, the heat shield started to come apart. But NASA can't do another test flight, because SLS sucks so hard, so instead they're going to fly Orion on an untested trajectory and trust their modeling to keep astronauts safe. Their same modeling which failed to predict Orion performance the first time. It's homicidally reckless. There is a real risk of this becoming yet another instance of NASA management's "go culture" getting people killed. Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, each time they say they've learned their lesson and will make changes to ensure it doesn't happen again, but either those changes are only superficial or they decay over time. We're now on the precipice of NASA management flying astronauts around the Moon with a heat shield which may quite possibly disintegrate during reentry, because SLS is too expensive for NASA to test it but NASA management wants to move forward anyway.
SJC_Hacker · 1d ago
> It doesn't work, not for Moon missions. It was never designed for Moon missions in the first place, the original plan was unspecified "deep space" missions without any clear plan of what it would actually be doing (because it's actual purpose is to keep money flowing to old Shuttle contractors.)
Maybe I'm missing some details but I thought the entire purpose of first-stage rockets was to get a certain payload with certain max dimensions (what can fit inside a cylinder of a certain height and radius) to LEO, or the equivalent delta-V. At that point first stage is discarded anyway. So what exactly the payload is (beyond its dimensions) and you do with your payload after getting to LEO (or equiv delta V) that shouldn't really make a difference, and you can't blame the first stage (which SLS is) for that if it did its job.
In the case of SLS, Block I can get 95 metric tons, Block I-B can get 105 tons and Block II 130 tons.
The Falcon Heavy in comparison can only get max 64 tons to LEO, less if you want to recover boosters and the core to save money
The real winner is the Saturn V which could get 140 tons to LEO. I know it was expensive per launch (about $1 billion in 2025 dollars) but given all the billions we've blown on trying to develop cheaper tech it seemed like we could have just stuck with what we know worked
lupusreal · 1d ago
> "Maybe I'm missing some details but I thought the entire purpose of first-stage rockets was to get a certain payload with certain max dimensions (what can fit inside a cylinder of a certain height and radius) to LEO, or the equivalent delta-V. At that point first stage is discarded anyway. So what exactly the payload is (beyond its dimensions) and you do with your payload after getting to LEO (or equiv delta V) that shouldn't really make a difference,"
It makes a difference because if you're designing a rocket for a mission then you'll have a rocket that's as close to optimal for the mission, given mission requirements, timelines and budgets as you can reasonably get it. That's not SLS, the Moon mission wasn't planned when SLS was designed and instead SLS is optimized to reuse Shuttle hardware.
Being stuck with a rocket that wasn't designed for the mission, as well as the political decision to use Orion, severely compromise the planning of Artemis. SLS lacks the power to get Orion into a proper lunar orbit, so instead they're going to use a highly elliptical NHRO lunar orbit with an orbital period of 7 days. This is extremely dangerous, it means that if there is any sort of emergency on the moon the astronauts may have to wait as long as a week to get back to Orion; which is probably a death sentence. It also means the lander has to be huge to make up for SLS's inadequacy, which means the Artemis program now relies on the success of Starship HLS and/or Blue Origin's HLS. This is going to delay Artemis and the entire reason this dependency exists is because Congress wanted a shuttle-derived rocket foremost, and then made the situation even worse by saddling it with their Boeing pork capsule.
What it comes down to is SLS is a rocket that ""works"" but isn't actually good at anything and therefore never should have been built.
matthewdgreen · 1d ago
We need to have a viable heavy rocket launch capability in the US at any given time, at very least just in case we detect an asteroid on a collision course. Right now that seems to fall entirely onto Falcon 9 (and Falcon Heavy), but the max payload weight even for Falcon Heavy seems much lower than the planned payload for SLS. Someday Starship may fix this, but we don't know if it will -- or if the final version will actually meet the planned specs.
lupusreal · 1d ago
> We need to have a viable heavy rocket launch capability in the US at any given time
Well we don't have that. SLS isn't it and never will be. The most SLS can be is a heavy lift rocket that can be used once every few years with a lot of upfront notice. Certainly not "launch capable" at "any given time".
matthewdgreen · 1d ago
I don’t think “at any given time” means we have an asteroid intercept mission sitting around on standby, although that’d be nice. I think it means “the capability exists and can be rushed to readiness over a series of weeks or months, at virtually unlimited cost.” Not sure that’s possible any other way. I would be fine with canceling SLS once good heavy lift alternatives are available, though.
bradley13 · 1d ago
I'm sure the bureaucracy can stand some serious cutting. However, with voluntary programs like this, you tend to lose the best people.
jart · 1d ago
NASA ended their space shuttle program in 2011 and hasn't been able to send things into space since. For the rest of that decade, the only way Americans could access ISS was by purchasing tickets on Russian spacecraft. NASA pivoted to partnering with private government contractors like ULA, which did 4 launches in 2024, probably spy satellites for the military, but their Atlas V rocket only has 14 launches remaining before retirement. That's it. Aside from the greatly maligned SpaceX of course, which did their first manned mission in 2020 and operated 134 launches in 2024.
There are still maybe one or two cool jobs left at NASA like controlling the Voyager software. But I imagine everyone else at NASA who respects themselves would have left for SpaceX a long time ago, rather than waiting for Trump to incentivize their retirement. Half of all revenue collected by the US federal government in 2024 (totaling $2565 billion) was given to retirees. Mostly middle class and government retirees. So this policy shift is very aligned with the US status quo, which is paying people to do nothing, rather than having them go through the motions of tilting at bureaucratic windmills trying to do something.
Even in this thread you see how pervasive the attitude is. I've seen several comments here so far talking about how the economic system isn't giving them enough money, but I've yet to see anyone here express a willingness to eat ramen, sleep in the trenches, get their hands dirty, and endure whatever pain and peril it takes if it grants the opportunity to help out getting things done with space exploration. Those are the kinds of people who create material abundance.
Lord-Jobo · 1d ago
Hey everyone, consider looking at the Wikipedia page for an agency before posting piss-takes on social media regarding that agency.
Sending things to space is a small part of what NASA does. "Aeronautics" is not "space rocketry", and all federal agencies do more than what their name indicates.
jart · 1d ago
And what is that?
dgoodell · 31m ago
NASA was originally formed as NACA to research aeronautics technology and help advance our uncompetitive nascent aerospace industry.
Building spacecraft and space transportation systems like the shuttle came later and is a very different type of task.
Unfortunately, the more flamboyant manned space flight and science missions have gradually come to dominate NASA, and much of the fundamental tech research that made it possible in the first place has been deprioritized and defunded.
throwawaymaths · 1d ago
> I imagine everyone else at NASA who respects themselves would have left for SpaceX a long time ago
not everyone wants to work for a company that is well known for grinding 20-somethings into the dust with an extremely poor work-life balance.
brookst · 1d ago
Not to mention the ethical questions about working for a company that is privately owned by a megalomaniac who’s demonstrated an interest in playing king of the world.
notahacker · 1d ago
And long before Elon took a turn for the political, taking a job with a company focused on launch and then satcomms constellations wasn't necessarily progression for someone wanting to scientific research into the composition of the asteroid belt or distant nebulae or design telescopes or Jupiter flybys or carry out longitudinal studies into astronaut health or climate change.
WalterBright · 1d ago
The launch capability is necessary and enabling for people who want to do such scientific research.
notahacker · 1d ago
Nobody said it wasn't.
That doesn't mean there are vacancies for NASA scientists studying other galaxies or asteroid petrology or the effects of orbit on bone health at SpaceX, or that moving to do comms links at SpaceX would necessarily represent career progression for the telescope designer.
jart · 1d ago
I can think of few things I'd wish for more. Although I'd settle for him being the CEO of Mars and then move there just to get away from all this nastiness on Earth.
filoeleven · 12h ago
Why wait?
Tadpole9181 · 1d ago
And does Nazi salutes on stagein front of the world.
bevr1337 · 1d ago
> For the rest of that decade, the only way Americans could access ISS was by purchasing tickets on Russian spacecraft.
Perhaps our coolest diplomacy program. I love that RU and USA have managed to cooperate in space through many decades of conflict.
verzali · 1d ago
This is a dumb take. NASA has (or had until Trump can back) plenty of interesting things. New Horizons, Europe Clipper, the James Webb, Hubble, Mars missions, ISS operations, human spaceflight, etc, etc are all being done by NASA workers. They do way more than just launch rockets and SpaceX can't even come close to the stuff NASA was doing.
Lord-Jobo · 1d ago
James webb is the perfect example of why we absolutely need NASA and what they do.
Did the budget balloon and delays rack up? Yup, and if you read about why you will see that it was basically unavoidable. A private business would have canceled it at the first roadblock (depriving us of an INCREDIBLE scientific tool).
And for the actual launch and deployment, the cost of the instrument meant that a very high success rate was very very important. Go ahead and look up the success rate of space X launches and tell me you would put a multi billion dollar tool on their rocket. You need someone who can spend more money, even a lot more money, and guarantee success.
WalterBright · 1d ago
JWST is a great achievement. No question about that. But we could have easily made good use of a dozen of them. NASA could have built a dozen with only a small incremental cost, because once you have a design and tooling and test rigs and test plans and machine shop setups, the incremental cost is pretty small.
For example, when I worked at Boeing, sinking a die for a forging cost $250,000. Stamping out a forging cost a few dollars. When I was putting together a stack of identical electronic circuit boards, the first one took 2 hours. The last one took 15 minutes.
OrvalWintermute · 1d ago
What you said is very correct.
there are a huge amount of one time costs associated with the design and engineering of a spacecraft or a satellite that could enable fairly cheap constellations compared to singular satellites, and the testing regimen becomes much more cheap when it’s done as part of a campaign.
I’m a proponent for the disaggregation of satellites from sensors using specified interfaces. Industry is definitely moving in this direction with their satellite buses you can buy fairly cheaply.
Will we want to stick a $3 billion sensor onto a $15 million satellite? I can’t answer that question
jeffbee · 1d ago
Man who believes NASA exists to hurl stuff into space. What a sad, narrow existence.
Balgair · 1d ago
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, don't get rid of the best people and programs; yeah, it doesn't work very well either. I've seen it tried in a few organizations, some have had a little success, most have not. What usually happens is that the most politically connected programs and people stay and the least are cut, and only after years of twaddling and overspending anyway. THe people that are there to cut things get swamped in meetings and smoke blown up their ass from every direction; they are made incompetent by design, and so the cuts are incompetent too.
I'm not about to say that I have any idea of the history of NASA spending cuts or those of the US gov in general. I know SLS is a dumb program but only because I know people that say that.
But, again, Hot Take, maybe the only thing left to try is the sledgehammer?
space-savvy · 1d ago
My perception as one who works in space based climate research is that both have being done, mass firings of people that makes no account of their skills or value, plus targeted firings that are less about finding waste and more about advancing ideology - anti-diversity, anti climate and earth science. From my view it’s awful, as I opine that the goal is to starve all non-military or non-human spaceflight efforts.
Cutting all probationary employees or recent promotions was just an awful strategy. For every department in the government.
magicalist · 1d ago
Sounds less like a hot take than a false dichotomy? The only choice is one of two non-specific analogies?
Lord-Jobo · 1d ago
> Sounds less like a hot take than a false dichotomy? The only choice is one of two non-specific analogies?
It's several assumptions deep to get to that kind of statement which is even more.... Interesting.
First, you have to assume that all federal agencies are the same, so if one needs to be smaller or more efficient, clearly they all need to be. Or if you have experience with one agency, others must be the same. And that your personal experience is representative. This is hilarious for a category so broad that it includes homeland security and NASA.
Secondly, you have to get very reductive about the direction of these agencies. Big agencies? "Well we HAVE to do SOMETHING!" When of course "just leave it alone, go after the actually expensive and wasteful things in our economy like health insurance or the military" is ignored.
Thirdly you need to assume that anyone involved with actually managing this process gives a single shit about the issue at hand. And they don't. Nobody who gave a shit about efficiency, the size/budget of federal agencies, or the power of the federal government would vote to +265% the budget of ICE. that's year over year, by the way. Nor would they approve the largest deficit increase ever moved through congress.
These people are jangling keys in front of your face and taking the money out of your wallet. And by discussing these cuts in good faith at all, we are reaching for the keys.
UncleMeat · 1d ago
We are overspending! Let's, uh, sledgehammer a small part of the pie (non-military non-entitlement spending) while increasing military and law enforcement budgets and cutting taxes!
The only thing left to do was the sledgehammer?
timeon · 1d ago
But why would you do that at all? If you want to save some money why not replace expensive healthcare system with one from some European country? That would save more money.
tmpz22 · 1d ago
Destroying things is easy building things is hard. In a six month term musk destroyed a lot. What is he rebuilding?
ACCount36 · 1d ago
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.
cozzyd · 1d ago
Should have stuck with 1080p.
On a more serious note, the administration's NASA budget is just completely nonsensical. I'm biased as a grantee, but the budget request called out our balloon experiment as should happen this year but refunded the balloon program (?!?). The congressional markups keep it so that's hopeful but there's still substantial uncertainty if we're actually going to Antarctica in ~3 months to fly our $20M experiment.
Even if all funding is ultimately secured will so many good people leave from the NASA balloon contractor that it will be difficult to have an Antarctic balloon campaign?
mosesbp · 1d ago
Does anyone have access to a copy of the NASA statement on this that was shared with the media? It makes a big difference where in NASA these people were employed - this is the difference between slimming down an engineering division or cancelling one launch project and the total destruction of a smaller program for physics, which may have a much longer-term impact on US science.
“You’re losing the managerial and core technical expertise of the agency,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society.
mosesbp · 1d ago
Thanks for this earlier article. From there it seems that the most staff losses are at Goddard, which is largely focused on science, not launch capabilities. So this unfortunately seems to fit into the larger “anti-science” push of the administration (e.g. the almost entirely senseless cuts at the NSF, NIH) more than it has to do with launch activities.
Another dark day for US physics research…
samrus · 1d ago
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
noobermin · 1d ago
It's not worth making this point anymore. Bannon et al have been explicit for decades now they want to destroy the federal government. It's ideological, that's it quite simply.
All these discussions about efficiency, even more so the debt given they just blew up the debt to never before seen levels just shows that sincerity is not deserved when talking to Rs.
jzb · 1d ago
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.
fennecbutt · 1d ago
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.
cyberax · 1d ago
> 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.
leptons · 1d ago
>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.
permo-w · 1d ago
the second someone like Trump gets hold of a voter exam setting process, they're either going to abuse it to their advantage, or abolish it entirely, after having used it as a wedge issue to set the working classes against "elites"
also, in the US, taking exams in order to vote is a massively sensitive issue as it was one of the ways that blacks were restricted from voting even when they legally had the right
more technically, where do you draw the line? if it's too easy, you're going to insult people without even getting the desired effect. if it's too hard, then the demographic will skew towards people who work in the industries affected by the policy. for a second that sounds good, and when it comes to something like culture or maybe health, then sure, but there are many industries that would burn the world to the ground if it ensured them 20% annual growth. can you imagine if the only people able to vote on financial regulations were people who know a lot about finance? there'd be famines within the year
treis · 1d ago
Because this is more like dialing it back to pre-covid:
Unfortunately the two choices are expansion and haphazard reduction
vlovich123 · 1d ago
I don’t know why the number of employees is a problem when the reduction is offset by instead contracting out that work and just needing to also pay middlemen for that work. It’s the worst of both worlds.
stogot · 1d ago
As a proponent of a “smaller fed”, I wish it was not haphazard but that we some actual thought went into it rather than shooting from the hip
pimlottc · 1d ago
I think GP's point is that it's achingly difficult to believe anyone at this point still buys into the "efficiency" bullshit. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 20 times...
pixelpoet · 1d ago
> fool me 20 times...
... I'll vote for you again!
Seems to be how that saying goes these days; and here I thought Bush had the dumbest possible ending for it.
QuantumGood · 1d ago
The "ecosystem" of polticial knowledge is balkanized in the U.S. (and elsewhere). "Making points" to those who are subscribed to a narrative fed from propaganda will not learn what they are told is not true. But noting causative "they say it's 'X', but it's actually 'Y'" feels more like simply properly labeling the information.
unnamed76ri · 1d ago
Every day the debt rises to never before seen levels. That’s not new or something exclusive to one party or the other.
scarface_74 · 1d ago
It absolutely is worse for one party more than the other. Clinton was the last President to balance the budget. Bush II and Trump made it far worse than any Democrat
unnamed76ri · 1d ago
That’s just factually not true. Obama and Biden both added more than Bush II. Trump on the other hand is a big spender…
Yes, thank you for providing a source that supports what I wrote. Big of you to highlight your prior mistake.
triceratops · 1d ago
It doesn't support what you wrote.
"The U.S. budget deficit exploded in fiscal year 2009, ultimately reaching $1.4 trillion under President George W. Bush...The deficit would remain above $1 trillion throughout the 2012 fiscal year, but it was slashed to as low as $440 billion in the later years of Obama's presidency."
Comparing Biden to GWB doesn't make any sense. Their presidencies were 12 years apart and in very different circumstances.
scarface_74 · 1d ago
Are you really saying that Clinton didn’t balance the budget that Bush II undid and that Trump’s latest “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add 3 trillion to the budget on top of what he did in 2017?
unnamed76ri · 1d ago
I’m saying what I said originally: your statement was not factual. Your own source affirms that.
scarface_74 · 1d ago
So which party’s presidents since Reagan have raised the deficit more?
juujian · 1d ago
None of this is efficiency. Our local NOAA office has lost their sparse janitorial staff. That doesn't make the agency more efficient. That just means an overworked person making 6 figures now has to figure out how to procure toilet paper and get the bathrooms fixed. It's obstructing people eager to do important work while marginally reducing cost, that's all it is.
jgilias · 1d ago
I don’t think it actually reduces costs if someone better paid is now doing it instead.
CydeWeys · 1d ago
No, payroll is still down, it's just that labor is now being used less efficiently and thus less useful work gets done.
rekrsiv · 1d ago
It's not about reducing costs, it's about funding the tax breaks for the rich.
CamperBob2 · 1d ago
No, that particular act of stupidity is about fucking up NOAA so it can be privatized by Trump cronies, while simultaneously burying "inconvenient truths" that inconvenience the same people.
Defunding NASA is about the tax cuts. NOAA is different.
stogot · 1d ago
Side note: Inconvenient Truth documentary might have actually been more widely accepted if it wasn’t a political ad for Al Gore
scoreandmore · 1d ago
There’s the problem. It wasn’t a political ad for Al Gore, it was published 8 years before he ran. It just so happened he was actually interested in improving things and leaning on smarter people for policy, but that made half the country go “Eeeewww… facts! Elitism!! we want someone dumber we can have a beer with for president!” That was literally an argument in the 2000 election: who would you rather drink with. Then GWB put on his yokel hat and yokel accent and dumbed it down so that people wouldn’t be scared. Instead of voting for someone with a plan, they voted for some rich cokehead fail-son from the Bush dynasty because he seemed more “of the people”. But Al Gore takes the flak for trying to raise awareness. Unbelievable how dumb this country is as a whole. And 10x dumber now that the current POTUS is unwriting history at rocket’s pace.
Hikikomori · 1d ago
Something something Florida recount and now those people are in trumps cabinet and even in the supreme court. The federalist society has been subverting democracy for a long time.
triceratops · 1d ago
How was it a political ad?
foobarbecue · 1d ago
Plus now we're paying everyone full salary to not work for many months. Complete waste.
poemxo · 1d ago
This makes sense. A GS doesn't earn that much, but if they resign and go work for SpaceX and get paid as a contractor, doesn't this just cost the taxpayer more?
OrvalWintermute · 1d ago
The normal formula we use is a range from 1.8x to 2.4x for fully loaded contractor labor rates based on contractor salary.
I presume we’ll be paying up to $576,000 for a senior engineer (GS15) equivalent from SpaceX
onepremise · 1d ago
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.
All this revolution in the objectively best of times.
At least in past when people wanted to burn everything down they had a good reason. This is truly the dumbest period in human history.
csours · 10h ago
There are many ways to explain or understand the US election(s) of 2024.
One way to understand the election is a rejection of complexity - political complexity, social complexity, scientific complexity, economic complexity, moral complexity - these are all out of style. People seem very happy to ditch all of these in favor of kayfabe [0].
Of course, an empty narratives doesn't last; but once people get used to an empty narrative, they sometimes just move on to the next one. Just give them a face and a heel - things are much easier to understand that way.
Anyway, I feel like things might stay this way for a while.
It's definitely a real human experience to say "I know MY job is complicated, but that thing over there ought to be simple"
Yet NASA still hasn't killed the Senate Launch System. The Lunar Gateway was just funded. The wrong stuff is being cut.
ACCount36 · 1d ago
SLS and Gateway should be the first to die, not the last. But politicians just can't stop funding their pork barrels.
BobbyJo · 1d ago
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 inspiring NASA, we need to give it a mandate that we can all rally around the same way. "Pioneering the future of..." is just too generic for anyone to grade them against. As long as that's the case, congress is free to run it into the ground as a pork barrel repository.
IMO, several smaller, more focused, more measurable, organizations would serve the American public far better.
insane_dreamer · 1d ago
> Federal Reserve is an example of a well run and focused organization,
It's also fully independent of the government and thus not affected by all this Trump/Musk/DOGE stupidity, as much as Trump tries.
CPLX · 1d ago
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.
It's good that the Fed can set monetary policy without pandering to whatever short-term goals politicians have at the time, as they've thoroughly proven their incapability to tackle long-term challenges like the deficit.
I also don't think that bailing out SVB is a sign that Dodd-Frank was just symbolic, since not doing so would have pretty significantly hurt the USA's tech sector, which is is strategic nationally for the economy.
But I can see an argument for limiting the Fed's purview to mostly be about monetary policy and less about enforcement of legislation, as it's done in other countries.
BobbyJo · 1d ago
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.
LtWorf · 1d ago
How dare you be critical of capitalism on ycombinator?
CPLX · 18h ago
What the Fed does isn’t “capitalism” it’s literally a government agency that sets prices.
yalogin · 1d ago
This happens across all agencies as every organization that deals with science is gutted. This is just extremely short sighted capitalistic re-allotment and in many instances removal of research, oversight and execution of critical tasks. The short term loss of jobs is the least harmful (as harmful as it is). The long term impact of losing key institutions like nasa, fda and others is going to be devastating. These same people that cheered the gutter by will then turn around and blame the government when the country fails to lead on issues or stop diseases. The platform for continuous political exploitation is set up successfully
hk1337 · 1d ago
I'm curious what percentage of the employees are engineers vs managers or some other non-engineering/non-critical type roles?
legacynl · 17h ago
And another World-leading American institution bites the dust! Pretty impressive how much damage a foreign plant could do in less than a year
Molitor5901 · 11h ago
But haven't people wanted NASA to be more streamlined, and efficient? Not sure if that is reducing staffing, or changing its mission. SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA had to be a shot across the bow.
MattGrommes · 11h ago
This is the same argument people made for DOGE. "Don't we want the government to be more efficient?" Yes, nobody is going to argue the opposite. But there are ways of doing this that are rational, then there is the way this is happening. Using a chainsaw for fine cutting only works when you are an expert at chainsaws. Otherwise you're just chopping chunks off something with a dangerous tool.
Of course this is assuming they actually want these agencies to be more efficient and not just die, which is a big assumption.
JKCalhoun · 11h ago
Pretty sure DOGE was always an excuse to point fingers (and make cuts) at any program the administration didn't like.
I mean if you were tasked with "government efficiency" don't you think the lowest hanging fruit would be the Pentagon budget? But, sure, go after air traffic control instead.
kacesensitive · 11h ago
Sure everyone wants NASA to be efficient but cutting it's funding to the lowest since 1961 isn't doing that. You don't "fix" NASA by shooting it in the head.
>SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA had to be a shot across the bow.
SpaceX, which has been awarded tens of billions in government contracts from NASA, is making leaps and bounds over NASA? I think in 2022 almost 50% of SpaceX revenue was NASA contracts. All those leaps and bounds over NASA are literally NASA funded.
lenerdenator · 11h ago
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 Alabama or wherever constantly trying to direct aspects of the project into their state, or to make the project serve their patrons' interests.
Of course, you could also say that up until recently, Elon himself was just as much of a patron, but still.
jotux · 10h ago
>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 some ways, this isn't wrong. It's easier to get a private company to do that than to get NASA to do it
But this is wrong. NASA came up with requirements and awarded money to multiple companies (which is how high-risk contacting works -- hedging development by funding multiple companies), one of the companies they funded has been pretty successful, some of them unsuccessful, some are still in development.
The whole argument and perception that NASA and Spacex are somehow competitors just makes no sense to me. It's like saying something like, "The US Navy needed a new frigate and funded the development of it from HII and NASSCO. HII made an amazing new frigate, and NASSCO failed. OMG HII is so amazing why don't we just pay them to be the US Navy?"
lenerdenator · 9h ago
> 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.
drtgh · 11h ago
In addition NASA has transferred knowledge and technology to SpaceX in an attempt to help them achieve success (or due government order, as I am not certain).
moolcool · 11h ago
NASA and SpaceX aren't competitors.
NASA's mission statement is "explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery".
SpaceX is a p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶d̶e̶d̶ privately held company whose mission is to increase shareholder value.
fnordpiglet · 11h ago
Specifically NASA is an exploration and science mission while SpaceX is a lift and transit provider for organizations like NASA. Historically NASA did their own lift and transit because no one else could and they seeded and researched the capabilities that SpaceX and other private ventures do today. This is a fine arrangement because commoditizing delta V is not exploration and science, it’s the means to it.
I’d note SpaceX is by far the most successful but by far not the only player in that space.
The brain drain and funding attack is on non military goals of NASA as well as on college and specifically graduate level people in the United States because they don’t ideologically align to the president. It’s a cultural revolution America style.
somenameforme · 10h ago
SpaceX's entire mission is to get people to Mars en masse. They revolutionized spaceflight precisely as a part of that mission, not as an ends in and of itself. For instance the Polaris Dawn mission [1] sent humans further into space than we've been since the Apollo Program, intentionally traversed the Van Allen radiation belt, and carried out the first commercial spacewalk, executed experiments and so forth. And all of this was carried out by SpaceX.
SpaceX’s mission is very explicitly not shareholder aligned, which is why Musk explicitly said he would never take it public or sell his majority stake.
The mission is mars and the money making endeavors (starlink) are to bring in the cash to do that.
moolcool · 10h ago
Even if he were sincere, sacrificing NASA because it's mission has some overlap with the stated goal of a billionaire is ridiculous.
kortilla · 1h ago
That’s unrelated to what I’m saying. My point is that spacex isn’t driven by shareholders
antonvs · 11h ago
> The mission is mars
It's hard to believe that by now Musk still hasn't realized what a ridiculous idea this is.
That realization could explain his weird pivot into e.g. buying Twitter and far-right politics. A midlife crisis triggered by discovering that his childhood dream was just a fantasy.
marcusverus · 10h ago
> It's hard to believe that by now Musk still hasn't realized what a ridiculous idea this is.
Maybe one day Elon Musk will understand space as well as you do.
burkaman · 11h ago
NASA is a SpaceX funder/customer, not a competitor.
nilamo · 11h ago
Streamlined and efficient normally means removing unneeded excess, or removing programs that didn't align with the overall goal. Convincing all your smart people to work somewhere else isn't streamlining, it's eliminating all possibility of future progress.
lawlessone · 11h ago
>leaps and bounds
repeated explosions?
marcusverus · 10h ago
SpaceX was responsible for ~87% of mass delivered into orbit last year. They are clearly on a whole 'nother level.
The thing that's exploding is Starship, which is still under development. Their production vehicles are among the most reliable in history. Falcon has a 99% mission success rate a 95% landing success rate and Falcon Heavy has a 100% mission success rate.
psunavy03 · 11h ago
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?
lawlessone · 9h ago
fair point
whatevaa · 11h ago
NASA is handicaped by politics. SLS is a jobs program, nothing else. Did they axe that shit or they kept it even after funding was cut?
p_l · 10h ago
NASA would have wanted to get rid of SLS itself (but probably stay some of the subordinated parts) because there's a good reason why it's nicknamed "Senate Launch System"
taco_emoji · 11h ago
> But haven't people wanted
Which people?
chomp · 11h ago
> SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA
What? These two do two separate things, do you mean ULA?
tonyhart7 · 1d ago
I hope spacex,blue origin etc can pick up these people
hope the best for them
declan_roberts · 1d ago
I don't think long termers at NASA are the kinds of people that survive at spacex, blue origin, etc. unfortunately
OrvalWintermute · 1d ago
My engineering colleagues could jump to SpaceX / Blue Origin / Newspace in a second, and they work insane amounts. Much Newspace pays NASA to borrow talent to help stand up their space programs.
However, they want to do NASA work which is very R&D focused and has great opportunities for innovation, plenty of low TRL work, and a bro ad variety of missions.
Industry isn’t doing that much low TRL work
kacesensitive · 1d ago
I know a few of these people. The two I've spoken with since their resignation basically said, "we're definitely getting laid off unless something insane changes with the funding cuts so at least this way we get a severance."
It's really sad how our NASA funding is the lowest it's been since 1961.
I'm so sick of the not only incompetent leadership in the U.S., but the literal anti-science stance our government has taken. We're 6 months into this nightmare, I really can't see how it can get worse.
rockskon · 1d ago
A phrase I've taken to heart from someone who has lived in a less stable nation than the US - it can always get worse.
nozzlegear · 1d ago
> We're 6 months into this nightmare, I really can't see how it can get worse.
Please, don't jinx us
Jtsummers · 1d ago
> The two I've spoken with since their resignation basically said, "we're definitely getting laid off unless something insane changes with the funding cuts so at least this way we get a severance."
I hope they did the math. The DRP is not a severance, and if they were laid off, they'd have been caught in a RIF and should have received an actual severance.
If there's a RIF, they get a severance of 1 week per year for the first 10 years of work, 2 weeks per year above that, and a bonus percent if over 40. It maxes at 52 weeks pay. If you have 18 years (at least 26 weeks of severance, more if over 40) with the fed, waiting for the RIF was always better than taking DRP unless you were going to retire or quit anyways. Under that, the choice should have been "Will a RIF happen before 30 September - my severance?". If you will get a 4 week severance, then will you get RIF'd before 2 September? If you think the answer is yes, taking the DRP makes sense, if no then the DRP costs you money. The only benefit to taking DRP if you're not going to get RIF'd is if you believe you can get another job before 30 September.
After 30 September, if they haven't found a new job they won't qualify for UEI since they voluntarily separated (true in most states, there may be some that would give them UEI but I've not heard of one that gives people unemployment for quitting).
Legally, they also have to ask NASA for approval for any second jobs until 30 September. If they don't and take an industry job (say with SpaceX), I wouldn't put it past this administration to fuck with them. The penalties are mostly administrative, but some ethics law violations can involve some steep penalties and prison time.
ineedaj0b · 1d ago
i too knew a lot of NASA employed peopled and it’s always regrettable to lose a job but.. what the heck was our space program doing? i know they blamed changing leadership and changing budget but the space shuttle’s replacement program was run horribly.
the only working part of cape canaveral was whatever spy satellites they needed to launch.
thankfully spaceX does a pretty good job and while I wish it was still nasa leading the globe in space travel, the main decline of our era is unwieldy bureaucracy and not even nasa could figure out how to run a profit despite a monopoly.
dahart · 1d ago
> and not even nasa could figure out how to run a profit despite a monopoly
You seem to be unaware that NASA does run a profit, and that SpaceX wouldn’t have been possible without NASA’s research and money. NASA has invested tens of billions in SpaceX.
Congress expressly directed NASA to create SLS, and expressly structured it to maximize job creation in designated Congressional districts—a goal obviously in tension with getting shit done*.
I don't think it's correct to blame the NASA, the agency, for management decisions made by their overseer!
*(Imagine what SpaceX would look like if Starbase were split into 50 pieces in 50 states—nosecones from Alaska, winglets from Senator Shelby's district in Alabama... Imagine, if their senior executive wasn't breathing down everyone's necks to build things faster, but instead prioritized employee headcount as his objective function (maximizing–not minimizing). The way Congressional lawmakers run their pet projects is quite ridiculous).
verzali · 1d ago
NASA does way more than Artemis. And, absurdly, the budget is cutting almost everything but Artemis and instead shoveling more money into pointless rockets.
perihelions · 1d ago
Well actually, Trump (or Musk?) cancelled Artemis, and Congress put it back in[0]. This is the same thing as has happened once before, under Obama in 2014[1].
> "The legislation earmarks $9.995 billion to be available until Sept. 30, 2032, for projects that have backing by politicians in states that have held key roles in NASA’s Artemis program."
> "The biggest chunk of that is $4.1 billion set aside “for the procurement, transportation, integration, operation and other necessary expenses of the Space Launch System for Artemis Mission 4 and 5.” The bill states that no less than $1.025 billion should be spent on the heavy lift rocket each year FY26-FY29."
> "It also includes $20 million to fund the Orion spacecraft “for use with the Space Launch System on the Artemis 4 Mission and reuse in subsequent Artemis Missions.”"
> "These two items run counter to the proposed NASA budget from the White House, which sought to end the SLS and Orion programs following the launch of the Artemis III mission."
Run a profit? What does that mean? What profitable business is currently available for an aeronautics and space agency that was never about making "profit".
tonyhart7 · 1d ago
NASA should launch internet sattellite like starlink so they can profit off something but its too late
I think the thinking that government body is not for profit is misleading since you want a bit of independence in terms on financial budget
see what happen when government change stance, NASA hiring and firing depends on political mood at the point
having an profitable business wouldn't make NASA cut the job if government decide to cut the budget
righthand · 1d ago
The US government isn’t a business. In fact the current attack on it by Magats is because businesses want part of their pie to turn into a business, not because it will help or empower the people or because the programs cost too much. They are doing it because they want to charge you more. They want to charge you for your comfortable American excess that you already paid for with tax dollars. They want to double dip, have the government subsidize the business with your tax dollars then charge you again to get the value out of it.
There is no sense in trying to treat the government like a business.
tonyhart7 · 1d ago
Yeah and that's why US gov is controlled by business and corporat
china literally doing an opposite, they force buy company shares that turns that into "half" state company
I know china is bad and I agree with you but controlling business and billionaire is one they good at
if I get to choose where my money goes, I rather let the money goes to government budget than billionaire pocket
keeping taxes low because government not heavily dependant on TAX while keeping goverment body effecient and profitable
torlok · 1d ago
Looking forward to SpaceX launching the next Voyager mission.
throwawaymaths · 1d ago
They have done some pretty interesting not for profit missions like inspiration 4. do the axiom missions count too (lol)?
rhcom2 · 1d ago
Appreciate the charitable fundraising but Inspiration 4 was just run of the mill rich folks doing space tourism.
throwawaymaths · 1d ago
Polaris dawn did real science
_carbyau_ · 1d ago
The brain drain of losing 20% of people is going to hurt.
The issue is now trust in your funding. Say in a few years NASA suddenly had money to rehire, who would trust that enough to orient your life around it?
ck2 · 11h ago
Meanwhile Pentagon just transferred a BILLION dollars from Nuclear Missile maintenance program to refurbish QatarForceOne
Do we survive this? Are you sure? Because this is just the first six months, imagine by summer 2028 what things are going to be like with every single thing defunded, homeless and car-living exploding, etc.
Tadpole9181 · 11h ago
Trump made an EO demanding the DoJ seek to remove consent requirements and aim to forcibly institutionalize the homeless and mentally ill in asylums (and explicitly denied an exemption for incarceration based on a lack of beds available).
So, uh, the camps will be funded and there will no longer be homeless... Man, sure glad the libs got owned.
t1234s · 11h ago
Won't these people just wind up at Lockheed, Raytheon etc.. doing the same work for their customer NASA?
crooked-v · 11h ago
Some will. Others will get hefty signing bonuses from other countries seeing an excellent opportunity to recruit entire already-functional and already-proven teams at once.
carlhjerpe · 10h ago
I've heard this is what SpaceX did as well
linuxhansl · 1d ago
Great. The best, i.e. those who can easily find another job, are often those who often take these offers.
There were so many options to improve efficiency with technology and then simply not refilling some of the jobs (apparently there's a 5-6% yearly attrition in government jobs anyway.)
But nooo... And obviously this was never what this was about.
A friend of mine worked for the White House under the Obama administration, with the first goal to digitize the VAs information. One of the Trump's first actions in 2016 was to end that. Shameful.
quantified · 10h ago
In order to privatize wealth, it helps to destroy common wealth.
mensetmanusman · 1d ago
Collateral damage of Americans thinking academics has gone off the deep end + the replication crisis.
spicyusername · 1d ago
Wow, that's terrible news...
I just don't understand why this is something people would want.
indy · 1d ago
Because a lot of people believe that large government institutions are nothing more than job programs for voters of Democrats.
The image is that for every scientist at Nasa there are countless administrators, HR ladies and diversity hires
spicyusername · 15h ago
That's a very cynical and ignorant image...
jeffbee · 1d ago
Many Americans are invested in getting rid of Earth science altogether. The less the people know about the state of the atmosphere, the better it is for Exxon. NASA had an extremely large Earth science mission.
spwa4 · 1d ago
Because a LOT of people have been left out of economic progress in Europe especially, and in the US. They want, even need change, and Trump came with a "believable" story for change. As in, more change than a president Harris would have delivered.
Unless we get economic progress more equally spread this will get worse and worse.
derriz · 1d ago
I don't think this is true or at least is not reflected by any statistics.
Inequality, as measured by GINI has been falling both for the EU as a whole and within most European countries for decades now. The last decade in particular has seen declines in nearly all EU countries.
Taking the EU on average the last time it increased was in 2014 - which is to be expected as the 2013 expansion allowed a number of relatively poor countries into the union.
A few examples, I looked at Ireland in particular, and inequality has never been lower - the earliest statistics I could find is from the mid-1980s. Inequality peaked around 2000 for the UK and has declined hugely since then. France is more equal than it was in 2000 although the fall is less dramatic than that for the UK. Admittedly Germany has seen a slight rise since 2000 but Germany has also absorbed millions of very poor refugees in that time.
The US is an outlier globally - with rising inequality over the last few decades.
Slightly off-topic, this untrue claim of rising inequality in Europe is often presented without challenge and then used to justify some radical political solution. To my mind, it's using the same political "mind hack" that the the MAGA/alt-right in the USA have used (in this case concerning race, immigrants, global multilateralism, or social tolerance - "wokism" - in general).
For both, the veracity of the claims is apparently unimportant and uninteresting as long as the claim aligns with one's political orientation. The goal of these oft repeated untruths is to provoke indignation or anger - in order to drum up support for some radical political "solution".
nosianu · 1d ago
Gini does not give a full picture, it is just one measure.
Here is a German podcast on the high quality "Deutschlandfunk".
Headline: "Only the top four percent make it to the top in Germany."
> Despite political upheavals over the past 150 years, Germany's elites have remained the same. Sociologist Michael Hartmann criticizes the fact that only four percent of the population shapes the country. He calls for a quota of working-class children on executive boards.
Same with Germany's schools, my country has one of the worst records when it comes to mixing it up. Those who come from well-educated parents will become well-educated. Society is quite static.
Next, Germany puts the majority of the financial burden of financing the country on incomes from work. Income from capital, or much worse, inheritances, are not even considered, whenever the government needs to plug holes it's going to come from working income.
Also, the number of bad jobs, especially those where even many engineers don't work for the actual employer, but for companies that lend them out, has only risen decade by decade to absurd heights. Employers may claim that is to work around the strict labor laws, that they cannot just fire somebody they don't want, but that is an incomplete statement at best. The entire economy has gone away from stable long-term, even life jobs, to ever more insecure employment. That is part of why our birth-rate has just dropped to new record lows too, there is just too little security and too much uncertainty in one's live these days.
We are also terrible at providing housing, which also depresses the labor market because moving has become risky and costly, there just is no housing no matter where you go, and if you find something it's likely to be much more expensive than what you had.
nosianu · 1d ago
> Here is a German podcast on the high quality "Deutschlandfunk".
I forgot the actual URL! It's German though. And a podcast (19. July 2025, 29 minutes) But it's good and quite thorough and has a lot of details, so if you understand German, it is worth a listen.
They say the "elite" is about 4,000 people in Germany, defined as those having significant and real influence in politics, law, media (highly concentrated ownership), business.
The problem with those stats for Ireland is that the Gini coefficient measured by the World Bank just looks at household income, not wealth. Much of the inequality in Ireland in the last few decades has been driven by the explosion in property prices and rents. This has created a great deal of inequality between people who benefited from the rapid increase in price of those assets, and the people stuck paying much higher rents. In roughly a generation (30 years) property prices have increased by roughly 600% after adjusting for inflation.
Household wealth inequality has also fallen significantly in Ireland. Longer term statistics are more difficult to find compared to income inequality but see Chart 3 here - https://www.centralbank.ie/statistics/statistical-publicatio... - provides a 12 year time series which proves this.
Irish property prices are and have risen considerably - but "600%", I think, is a somewhat dramatic way to present the increases - on an average yearly basis, it's been about 3.5% per year for the last 2 or 3 decades. To put this into perspective, average household incomes have been rising at a rate closer to 9% (non-inflation adjusted) per year - see https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ireland/annual-househo...
pseudo0 · 1d ago
The source I linked shows the Ireland housing index going from around 33 in 1995 to over 180 in 2025. That's an over 6x real return, which equates to a rate of return of over 6.5% after inflation.
Looking at the CEIC data you linked, which is not inflation-adjusted, it shows household income increasing from just under $20k in 2003 to around $40k in 2023. Plugging that into the CAGR formula you get a 3.5% nominal annual return.
So house prices have increased at over 6.5% annually after inflation, while household incomes have increased at 3.5% before inflation.
And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble:
> The Gini coefficient fell from 0.78 in Q2 2013 to 0.70 as of Q4 2020, before declining sharply since 2021 (Chart 3). This steeper decline in 2021 is driven by increasing net wealth for the Bottom 50%, accounted for by a combination of a decline in this groups mortgage liabilities and, to a lesser extent, an upward appreciation in the value of housing assets. As a consequence, by Q1 2022 the Gini coefficient for Ireland stood at 0.68.
derriz · 1d ago
Yes I made a mistake in my calculation - household income (from that CEIC data) rose 4.1% per annum between end of 2012 and the end of 2023.
Your graph comes from BIS data - picking 1995 as starting point is a little unfair as that's exactly when house prices started to rise - if I measure from 1990, the rise (using BIS nominal nominal to make comparison easier) is 5.1% per annum.
But yes house prices have risen faster than household incomes. Like pretty much everywhere else in the world.
> And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble
The claim I was contesting was that wealth inequality had increased in the last few decades. It has not - it has decreased significantly.
spwa4 · 1d ago
True this is bullshit. The government has a direct policy of wealth transfer from the population to itself and banks, who have "foreign" (except of course not really, for the worst example look at the board of the "gift to Ireland" national wealth fund and how the very young board members have no qualifications or experience and DO have family in government ...) ownership. Which, conveniently, isn't counted in the Gini coefficient.
But if you count household wealth in houses in Ireland, household wealth in Ireland in 1986 used to be 3 average Irish houses, and now it's 1/3rd. This was, just like anywhere else, deliberate government policy, amongst others to allow banks to invest in housing stock, preferential tax treatment and guarantees for property ownership, government buying of specific (mostly politician owned) housing, non-enforcement of both Irish and non-Irish tax law ... the list goes on.
Ireland prides itself on creating prosperity by lying and cheating other EU countries out of their tax income. Surprise! A government that lies on international treaties (they promised to enforce minimum tax since 2008, then ... didn't, then claimed credit for the "unseen in history prosperity boom"). Surprise! A government that does that ALSO lied to it's constituents and instead of delivering prosperity took 2/3rd of every euro you own.
"Oops, who could have seen this coming"
derriz · 1d ago
Again, the statistics and numbers completely contradict this narrative. We have a statistic - income redistribution - which effectively measures government policy in this regard.
And in figure 3, page 11 of the above report, Ireland has seen the 3rd highest growth in income redistribution in the OECD with redistribution from wealthy to poor growing by 40% in the space of a decade
So as far as I can see the facts indicate that Irish government policy is the exact opposite of what you claim.
spwa4 · 12h ago
Clearly, it redistributes mostly from normal people to the government, not so much from the rich to the poor. Wouldn't it produce exactly those graphs if anyone actually counted became a lot poorer, then the rich just need to get not counted (Isle of Man perhaps?).
I don't know why the rich in Ireland are somehow not on that graph, but when you walk around in Dublin for 10 minutes you see that this just isn't the real situation. It absolutely isn't the case that there aren't very rich people in Ireland and obviously they're not getting their wealth redistributed ...
timeon · 1d ago
Why it will get worse? They got what they voted for.
gorbachev · 1d ago
The issue is that what they voted for isn't going to improve anything in their personal circumstances. Not only because what's happening doesn't actually fix any of the issues, but even worse, it's being used to siphon money to private hands friendly with Trump.
There are no good outcomes until people stop voting for these grifters and con men.
oblio · 1d ago
Didn't Trump just cut taxes for the top 1% while most of his voters are low earners with low educational attainment?
spwa4 · 7h ago
That would be one reason things won't get better for his voters. At which point they'll look for more extreme politicians. It will get worse.
Hell, it already has gotten worse in both France and Germany compared to the US. Imho Macron is more or less the same kind of politician as Trump (rich, and in it to make the rich richer), just a very different person (for one thing he's easily got 10x Trump's IQ, 10x Trump's looks, and doesn't look like an ancient golden retriever that got demummified for a presidential term). Obviously this guy failed to improve France's economic prospects, and every election cycle the actual Nazis, led by Le Pen, gain 5% extra of the vote. Germany differs a lot in the details, but something similar is happening.
The situation in (some parts of) Europe is like if you're hoping for 3rd Trump term, because Steve Bannon became a presidential candidate that polls over 50%. When Trump has just made immigration policy stricter in desperation, because even Trump realizes what a disaster that would be.
mindslight · 1d ago
Because they're never fucking satisfied by what they've actually voted for. It's essentially the fundamentalist dynamic of blind faith, applied to the real world and making for terrible results.
The con artists they vote for are plainly not going to help their interests (and often work against them), yet they reject understanding this and instead buy into simplistic emotional propaganda that validates their frustrations and absolves their responsibility. Then after some years go by when the mess has set in and Democrats have the nominal power, the Republican media machine goes to work highlighting everything they've broken and pinning it on the current administration. Rinse and repeat.
(context: I'm a libertarian and I have many criticisms of the Democrats as well, but at least they haven't been directly sabotaging the country for the past several decades, culminating in this)
watwut · 1d ago
This has exactly zero with being left out of economic progress and wanting it. They literally vote for people who are leaving them outside of all subsequent economic progress. And that was also their voting record in the past. What they actually voted for was culture war - disgust with trans specifically and hate toward anything that can be casted as liberal which includes science. It was wish for Christian autocracy and enforcement of associated values.
The feel good explanations are just that - feel good euphemisms. Acting on them failed in the past repeatedly. Politicians who tried to improve situation of these people were punished, repeatedly. Meanwhile, politicians acting in offensive and harmful way were rewarding even when they made lifes of their voters worst.
We really should stop projecting these good faith falsehoods when the are and were clearly false.
linguae · 1d ago
I don’t know enough about economic conditions in Europe to say something intelligent, but unfortunately I’m very pessimistic about the near- and medium-term future of America. There’s nothing on the horizon that will make life better for everyday Americans, who are currently struggling to keep up with the sharp rise in the cost of living in recent years. From tariffs to business uncertainties, all I see is life getting even more expensive, and we might reach a tipping point where everything falls apart. I’m also very concerned about the national debt and the dollar.
All I know is that the 1990s until now have been a bonanza for some people but increasingly difficult for many others. I blame this on the financialization of our economy, with housing policy in America’s coastal metro areas definitely not helping (municipalities restrict supply through zoning and other mechanisms, and the financialization of our economy only exacerbated matters by pouring gasoline on the demand side). This is a failure of our leadership class; I’m not just talking about politicians, but I’m talking about our wealthy, our corporate executives, and even ourselves when we have positions of influence. Collectively the leadership of our country has chosen maximizing their own material benefit at the expense of maintaining a livable society. The result is anger due to Americans increasly having a harder time just getting by while our “leadership” keeps adding to their power and wealth.
Due to anger over establishment politicians, the Republican Party has been completely captured by MAGA, and the Democratic Party has a very vocal left wing that came close to winning the 2016 primary and was a serious contender in 2020.
Unfortunately Trump on a good day is far more destructive than Clinton, both Bushes, Obama, and Biden on their worst days. Trump’s neo-mercantilist economic policies won’t bring prosperity, but unfortunately his stance on “culture war” matters have resonated with large swaths of the American electorate; we’ve long had problems with racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and other related issues since the colonial era.
Moreover, despite Trump’s promises in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” Trump is backed by many prominent billionaires and other influential and powerful people. Trump is not a one-man operation; he would have no power without an entire apparatus of GOP politicians and a stacked Supreme Court.
The only thing keeping Trump’s popularity afloat is his relentless attacks on “enemies” of MAGA, such as immigrants, scientists, universities, unflattering media outlets, Democratic politicians, etc. But eventually the fallout of his reckless policies will trickle down to Trump voters in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and either when Trump runs out of enemies or when the MAGA base gets crushed by the weight of high prices and are looking for answers, what are Trump and MAGA politicians going to do?
Unfortunately I don’t see any easy solutions. A return to the pre-2017 status quo ante is only going to lead to the same leadership that led to such anger in the first place. However, staying the course is definitely going to lead to a crash. The solution is going to need to come from the people, but it’s hard for average people in America to compete against systems that entrench the power of our two-party system and that require massive amounts of money to effectively compete. There are no easy ways out of this mess.
mizzao · 1d ago
Really astute, non-political, and objectively accurate summary of the situation, in my opinion. Thank you for your writing.
exe34 · 1d ago
> Trump came with a "believable" story
If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Sadly those who didn't believe didn't vote enough.
krainboltgreene · 1d ago
These two sentences paired together is so fantastically american.
exe34 · 1d ago
I'm British, but sadly we're heading the same way.
krainboltgreene · 1d ago
Just to be clear I think what you said is extremely shortsighted and self-defeating.
exe34 · 1d ago
That does sound very British at this point, tbh...
15155 · 1d ago
> If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get.
Is it a matter of "belief," or could it possibly be an optimal strategy to secure potentially two more Supreme Court nominations?
Demiurge · 1d ago
I wonder, is this what you’d say if “they” believed the Nigerian prince email? Everyone believes something outside of their expertise, everyone is riding the tide to some extent.
throw123xz · 1d ago
If many around me warn me about the Nigerian prince scam and I fall for it, then I think I deserve some of the pain. Sure, I'm still a victim, but personally I'd be questioning my intelligence and would try to see where I had failed so it doesn't happen again.
Demiurge · 1d ago
What if half the people you know falls for it and tells you you’re missing out?
throw123xz · 1d ago
It's funny that you ask that because around 10 years ago, there was this investment stuff going around in my community. No one warned me about the dangers and those who tried to convince me to join only said good things about it, but I looked at it and it looked weird. It was a pyramid scheme. So I didn't join, didn't lose any money or lose any friendships over it.
If I come here and tell you that I'm going to reduce expenses and debt while reducing taxes and also investing massive amounts of money to improve the military, healthcare, etc, something should go off in your head because it doesn't add up.
Voting for someone promising unrealistic things is no different from going into a dark alley in what you know is a rough neighborhood. A victim is still a victim, but grown ups must own up to their actions... and there's no other way of saying this: what you did was fucking dumb. It's even dumber if you do the same dumb thing twice.
Demiurge · 1d ago
Sure, kudos to you. Half the people are dumber than the other half, and thats accross the party lines. I still sympathize with all those people, even if they got outsmarted.
donkeybeer · 1d ago
Its already that way with way more than half. I still find it hard to believe in the imaginary even though greater than 90% of people do.
Trump should have been a much simpler problem. Those who want to be stupid badly can't be helped.
exe34 · 1d ago
Voting away democracy in order to install a theocracy - we laugh at Turkey in how they can either have democracy or they can have freedom, but not both. It seems America has gone the same way.
watwut · 1d ago
Yeah, but then they doubly deserve what they get, assuming happy scenario where they get consequences and not innocent people. Voting for Trump because you want to entrench even more corrupt and ideologically driven supreme court is not exactly an excuse.
Unfortunately, consequences wont go only to people who voted for Trump, they will harm quite a lot of innocent people.
Yeul · 1d ago
Even the US is not exempt from economic rules. Trump and the rich want less taxation. The deficit cannot grow infinitely. Something has to be cut.
amanaplanacanal · 1d ago
It has nothing to do with the deficit. If it did, the big beautiful bill would have looked much different.
Yeul · 1d ago
The US is lending money from people who DO care about the deficit.
const_cast · 1d ago
The Rs do not give a flying fuck about the deficit and to even so much as imply otherwise is nothing short of dishonesty. We're well past the point of giving benefit of the doubt on proven, and obvious, lies.
oblio · 1d ago
I'm confused, won't Trump's tax measures increase the deficit by trillions? Isn't he already spending more than Biden over the same time interval?
How exactly is Trump reducing the deficit by any significant margin?
myvoiceismypass · 1d ago
Trump and the Republican Congress are adding several _trillion_ to the deficit with the latest bill they rammed through in the middle of the night. They do want less taxation, but only on the richest of the rich.
Not to mention - tariffs are essentially an inflation tax on _every_single_purchase_.
jschveibinz · 23h ago
There are some numbers to consider in this discussion--all of these are from data on the web:
1. Only Israel ($3,400) spends more per capita on R&D than the U.S. ($2,800) on R&D
2. The U.S. spent around $900 billion on R&D, with China estimated at $800 billion and the EU at $381 billion.
3. The per capita spending for other major economies:
- EU $850 per person
- China around $700 per person (estimated)
- South Korea $2,800 per person
- Japan $1600 per person
(all roughly PPP adjusted)
Please check my estimates.
The point is that the U.S. spends a lot on R&D, so a haircut may not be bad for the health of U.S. R&D programs (new priorities) let alone the temporary reduction in expenses. The R&D output is still going to be enormous relative to the rest of the world and probably on par with China.
crnkofe · 1d ago
So sad to hear this. It sounds like gutting various agencies and public sector is being done for no real purpose other than to "save". What's being saved for is something apparently nobody knows. Probably not even the current top brass.
insane_dreamer · 1d ago
We're not saving anything. The budget is as large as ever, with $150B increase on "border control". That's what we're gutting all this for. A crying shame.
blindriver · 11h ago
Or, conversely, it’s opening up opportunities for new grads and for promotion opportunities for existing employees.
mathattack · 1d ago
If you have a PhD in physics, and your option is to deal with this abuse and get Paod X, or join an AI firm and get paid 5X, which would you choose?
shutupnerd0000 · 1d ago
Why does an AI firm need a physics PhD?
foobarian · 1d ago
To run numpy and Jupyter
tempodox · 10h ago
Trump already wins the golden sledgehammer price, and that's just six months into his term. Even if the sum total will only be eight times that, it will still be the most massive wreck fest the country has ever seen. Any enemy of the U.S. would be proud to wreak that much havoc without firing a single shot.
backtoyoujim · 11h ago
I would have titled it that the USA is facing brain drain from thousands exiting NASA.
BurningFrog · 10h ago
I expect they'll overwhelmingly stay in the USA.
wnevets · 1d ago
but I was told Musk has been one of the major forces in the administration fighting to preserve and fix NASA
protocolture · 1d ago
Devils advocate, Musk is no longer part of the administration, and news reports have cited Nasa nonsense as part of why.
wnevets · 1d ago
> Devils advocate, Musk is no longer part of the administration, and news reports have cited Nasa nonsense as part of why.
Only a devils advocate would believe that with this administration still giving his companies massive government contracts [1] and regulation win falls [2]
They should totally use that other company with reliable launch capability.. or maybe that government department with reliable launch capability... or maybe they should go with the russians... hmmmmm.
ACCount36 · 1d ago
Reportedly, Jared Isaacman, the rumored Musk's NASA pick of choice, wanted to cut down SLS/Orion and axe Gateway - and was opposed to science cuts.
Jared Isaacman is out, and what we're seeing actually happen now is the opposite of that. All the pork barrels are getting funded, and the brunt of budget cuts seems to be stated to be born by science missions like Roman Space Telescope.
protocolture · 6h ago
>Reportedly, Jared Isaacman, the rumored Musk's NASA pick of choice, wanted to cut down SLS/Orion and axe Gateway - and was opposed to science cuts.
I have read third party commentary on the SLS/Orion stuff that agrees. And actually, IIRC, Gateway requires multiple launches contracted out to Boeing and SpaceX, so this would be cutting off musks nose a little.
mberning · 1d ago
I am highly sympathetic to all impacted. It’s devastating.
The rhetoric around cost cutting is something I can’t figure out how to deal with. The media makes it sound like the sky is falling with every cut. But having worked in enormous organizations myself, I also know that teams can and do lose headcount all the time, and somehow manage to carry on.
I guess the issue I wrestle with the most is how we can spend tax dollars on programs, but also have the ability to reduce those programs when needed, without it seeming like the end of the world.
We can’t have government agencies and programs that go on forever, expanding, growing in headcount and budget, for eternity. But the rhetoric around these events would have you believe that is the only path forward.
insane_dreamer · 1d ago
That's a significant brain drain that will take a long time to recover from. Even if you think NASA was bloated, this is not a good trajectory for the country.
jaimex2 · 1d ago
If Bill Nye the self appointed 'science guy' is against it then its probably a good thing.
MinimalAction · 1d ago
I'm amazed at the short-sighted nature of this late-stage capitalistic world. A company like Meta which makes its fortune via insane amount of anti-user policies gets to earn a revenue of $164B with a profit of over $62B. A scientific organization that benefits everyone in so many innumerable ways, something that serves as a champion of humanity cannot be allowed to maintain a budget of $25B a year. Shut everything, let us bow to our AI overlords!
EasyMark · 1d ago
This is part of the new administration's war on science and education. They are actively gutting science, medicine, and education in order to shift wealth to the upper 0.1%. It's not about budgets or "woke", those are just excuses to dumb down America and reduce our position as a world leader in science and tech. A move in order to have short term gains for a few billionaires and an overarching goal to create a more religious and less educated society that is more easily controlled.
yieldcrv · 1d ago
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
myko · 1d ago
It isn't even a real program. This entire administration is a farce.
almosthere · 1d ago
SLS is dead, invest in outside tech. Or for crying out loud start pulling out the crashed ships and donate them to more industries and get some real tech going.
kubb · 1d ago
So basically, Elon Musk is eating NASA, and people are cheering.
Robotbeat · 1d ago
Nope, this is Russell Vought and the OMB. The anti-tech-bro group (the brainworm faction, courtesy of RFK Jr) that fought with Elon and successfully got him kicked out of the throne room. Elon registered his opposition to the huge science cuts at NASA in the President’s budget request.
jmclnx · 11h ago
Why would people stay employed there with Trump and the GOP treating them the way they do.
They are in demand and moving will get them higher pay and a more stable life.
optimalsolver · 1d ago
I always wonder how many caught up in these federal mass firings voted for Trump. I can't imagine they could've foreseen this outcome.
USAID was probably a stronghold of Dem voters, but what about the Dept. of Agriculture, or the Forest Service?
monkeyelite · 1d ago
Isn’t a criticism of democracy that individuals vote for their immediate benefit (MY job, MY housing) with no consideration of longer term consequences?
optimalsolver · 1d ago
I suppose they're involuntarily practicing a high form of civic virtue, although that doesn't pay off the mortgage.
monkeyelite · 16h ago
I didn’t say anything about virtue. You’re probably right that they didn’t fully anticipate changes.
But what bothers me is that hypocrisy accusation avoids making a claim about what would actually be a good or bad policy.
Do you want federal cut backs or not?
optimalsolver · 15h ago
>Do you want federal cut backs or not?
The right-leaning people caught up in this would probably say "Yes, but not in my obviously highly efficient division."
> SpaceX and friends don’t do scientific research.
They do though. That's the premise of xAI and even on their website is that they have all this 'research' and are feeding it to that 'grok' to establish even more scientific 'discoveries'
I use quotes because I value the human side of things and like to enjoy the excitement and joy of collaboration and people coming up with new stuff.
robotburrito · 11h ago
Does this matter? Aren’t we like a year from AGI? /s
andrewstuart · 1d ago
In the end there will only be money for paying national debt interest.
myvoiceismypass · 1d ago
The deficit will be increasing with the BBB. So, no.
renewiltord · 1d ago
It may well be a problem but I’m not going to take my predictions from the guys who said “I give it two weeks before Twitter collapses”.
arghandugh · 1d ago
Thanks, tech industry! A generational disruption in all forms of science and the destruction of the crown jewels of America’s last century, but at least now you get to be ruled by a violent senile pedophile and his deranged crackhead enablers.
pi-err · 1d ago
You could swap "tech" for "big media" and just play the same blame game for Reagan's and Bush Jr's elections.
> the crown jewels of America’s last century
Including Nasa in this pure idealization of the past. Nasa had many flaws that enabled a catastrophic Shuttle program and then the slow loss of US go-to-LEO capability.
There's probably more to expect of US investment in space without incompetent or contradictory military and political oversight than the current nasa zombie programs.
And it's unclear that Nasa can ever be without that oversight.
jimbo808 · 1d ago
Do you remember when a President of the United States was impeached for an affair with an adult intern?
Do you remember when a Republican presidential nominee defended his opponent from a racist question at a Republican Rally, calling him a "decent family man?"
--
Then, can you think of a time when a POTUS committed a pump a security he was selling, only to dump it immediately after his inauguration, and it it was barely talked about at at all?
john-h-k · 1d ago
Okay but doesn’t seem relevant to how effective NASA currently is
Yeul · 1d ago
I wasn't alive but I read about how people made fun of Carter for being a peanut farmer.
So much for Americans believing in hard work and salt of the earth! Now they have a NYC property developer.
To understand America do not listen to what they say but watch what they do...
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 20h ago
Churchill once said: "Americans will eventually do the right thing, after they've tried every other option."
Kind of fits the current administration's strategy.
hopelite · 1d ago
You may not realize this because the vast majority of people don’t realize it, but there are far deeper things going on with both those situations, i.e., how Reagan became what he did and why Carter was so attacked and for so long. It takes immense understanding of history and geopolitical matters beyond what the system’s education system can impart, which makes it challenging to understand things properly.
Think of it like trying to understand the true origins and nature of the Soviet Union while being in the Soviet Union. Only a few people will even be able to achieve such an understanding and only under immense pressures and significant dangers even without speaking out, just alone for having sought out the truth. You cannot understand the Matrix while being plugged into it.
anigbrowl · 1d ago
You know there are people on HN who come from or live outside the US, right? Instead of ruminating on how incredibly hard it is for mere mortals to understand the historical forces in play, you could just make your attempt at articulating what you think the key drivers were. Granted, a HN comment only allows for so much depth and references to books or academic papers involve work to generate and read, but as it is you've advanced no thesis whatsoever.
dennis_jeeves2 · 1d ago
>matters beyond what the system’s education system can impart,
Or for most people to absorb.
IAmGraydon · 1d ago
[flagged]
hopelite · 1d ago
You can keep your abusive language to yourself. It does not work on me. Either you have intention behind your lies or you are simply naive. Either way you are projecting, you can move along. You are dismissed.
enraged_camel · 1d ago
[flagged]
fdorzhensky · 1d ago
It was factual, it just skipped some steps.
Similarly we could use random phrase associations like:
The episode with golden rain -> facebook manipulation done by private office in St. P. -> elected
It sounds non-factual until you know the story, then you see its extrapolation.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 20h ago
Kind of funny that you specifically pointed out the "lying under oath" part. Becaause you know, the initial argument's current POTUS lied under oath, several times, about way more dangerous things.
And he fired the people that did their job at the FBI to investigate him. Out of pure retaliation.
zoklet-enjoyer · 1d ago
[flagged]
pydry · 1d ago
The shuttle program wasnt what NASA wanted to do, it was the military that pushed for that.
It's ironic that you'd blame them for the thing they didnt want to do.
If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve been building reusable rockets like the ones elon is building now, except in like, 1980.
pi-err · 1d ago
It's ironic that you didn't read a comment before answering.
> it's unclear that Nasa can ever be without that (military and political) oversight
By design, Nasa is probably doomed to get interference.
> If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve been building reusable rockets
Pure fantasy. Nasa's interest for reusable vehicles led them to the Shuttle. Even without all the design changes, it would have been a dud.
Due to its nature, Nasa can't freely explore and commit to a design like SpaceX does/did. It draws a concept and freezes it after contractor review, only to find after an already massive investment if it works. Then there's public accountability instead of executive risk taking.
I'd bet the proper way to have protected Nasa would have been to keep it focused on key scientific missions with limited financial exposure. Mars rovers are a perfect case, or most James Webb.
Using Nasa to go back to the Moon or reach Mars was doomed to fail (sort of like it failed post Apollo).
pydry · 1d ago
>Nasa's interest for reusable vehicles led them to the Shuttle
The shuttle was a result of budget cuts they had no control over, military pressure they had no control over AND an interest in reusable spacecraft. The latter wasnt the problem.
The way I see it you are either blaming the organization for something it had no control over or are making an incoherent point in order to disparage the organization. Perhaps you could illuminate a 3rd interpretation of your comment.
exe34 · 1d ago
Yes, too much oversight is the problem here, not lobbying and self-interest/corruption.
sokoloff · 1d ago
What part of this do you think is the fault of the “tech industry”?
The tech industry certainly has its flaws and things to criticize, but this doesn’t seem part of it, unless I’m missing a connection somehow.
bluealienpie · 1d ago
Probably the creation of techno-fascist state, or at least the desire to have one as outlined by Thiel and co. The excessive deference that all tech companies have had towards elected leaders instead of striving for independence under the law, and now they strive to co-opt government to achieve their goals.
hansmayer · 1d ago
Who were the people in the front row behind the current president during his inauguration ceremony, I wonder?
No comments yet
jakubmazanec · 1d ago
Some of the tech industry leaders were going all-in on Trump before the election [1].
Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Ellison and of course Elon Musk who funded the trump
aisenik · 1d ago
It feels like malpractice to leave Andreessen off the list, if only because he's such a good example of how losery and pathetic the tech moguls really are.
Imagine becoming wealthy and powerful in an age of abundance off of NCSA Mosaic and throwing it all away because you feel threatened by black people and think that government funded research is now bad. That's the level of "advanced thought" in these guys' group chats.
prpl · 1d ago
Well, among other things, the Vice President was quite literally a tech venture capitalist with all sorts of tech support (not that kind though)
isoprophlex · 1d ago
The relentless disintermediation of, well, everything in society is powered by big tech. No middle class can exist anymore in the neoliberal turbocapitalist system that's trying to grow into place everywhere; there is just the little human puttering about, and a bunch of extremely rich oligarchs and tech bros taking their money.
Technology made all of this possible. From amazon (destruction of local shops) to uber (not saying the old system was good, but who needs transit concentrated into the hands of a few) to google (monopolizing and stifling search and adtech). And who knows what role large scale manipulation by stochastic propaganda parrots will play.
croes · 1d ago
So Thiel and Musk have nothing to do with Trump getting elected.
Or Social networks as an easy way of spreading misinformation.
New to the club AI that delivers convincing sound, photo and video „proofs“ for any fake news they want including elaborated texts fitting to their target audience
No comments yet
isodev · 1d ago
Just a wild guess: The connection is uncontrolled growth, where companies evolve from a normal business to a perpetual "increasing shareholder value" grift (think the Apples, Googles, Microsofts, Metas, (Space)Xs out there...). It happened when tech incorporated "the user" as a product (as opposed to tech working to actually solve problems and elevate the status quo).
No comments yet
smokel · 1d ago
Any practical tips on how to improve upon the current situation?
thowaway7564902 · 1d ago
That's not what's important right now. What's important is figuring out whose fault this is
Start perusing https://news.ycombinator.com/active as your hn frontpage and make note of a very obvious flagging bias there. Vouch and upvote the information that is getting hidden while not breaking the guidelines. Hulk Hogan's death being front page news while MechaHitler getting flagged tells you everything you need to know about this site.
oc1 · 1d ago
Thanks also Y Combinator and friends for making this possible
jewelry · 1d ago
How come is it the tech industry to blame? Trump’s election result is because of the decades of de-industrialization and undereducated people left out of the growth during this time. I don’t see why tech industry would be the first to blame.
oc1 · 1d ago
If i leave a knife on the table and you decide to stab me with it, who is to blame? The knife, me or you?
butterlettuce · 1d ago
def runMentalGymnastics():
“”” You, because you left the knife on the table “””
pass
hopelite · 1d ago
“… at least now you get to be ruled by a violent senile pedophile and his deranged crackhead enablers.”
Which one? *blank stare*
America has a deeply rooted problem with a parasitic and evil, lying, conniving, devious ruling class and their treasonous, accomplice enablers… to clarify what may be dismissed by some because you call them “crackheads”.
amanaplanacanal · 1d ago
It used to be they tried to hide it and were embarrassed when they got caught. Sometimes they even got thrown out of office.
hopelite · 1d ago
I am quite convinced that this is at least one of the "benefits" of things like the sexual liberation movement and even the push to breach national norms against pornography; you don't even have to be embarrassed or step down, let alone be prosecuted for perversion, degeneracy, sexual abuse, etc. if you are a ruling class perverse person that is bored with normal things and therefore seek ever increasingly perverse, degenerate, transgressive, and abusive things. You are also easily controlled and manipulated once you have crossed the line and are compromised by indulging in perversions.
What do you do when/if you have everything else, you have done everything else, and normal things everyone else does bore you and you essentially have unlimited money/resources; you do things that most people cannot even imagine anyone would think of doing, let alone do them. It is why certain elements of our society have worked so hard to corrupt society in all kinds of ways, including through desensitization through all kinds of media and even things like essentially taking capital punishment off the table, even for the ver people who it is most effective for, deliberate, intentional "white collar" criminals like the very kinds that do perverse things. You can't pardon perverts and con artists and traitors if they are dead.
_proofs · 1d ago
sorta sounds like altered carbon's "meth" class of wealth.
Robotbeat · 1d ago
FWIW, this is the brainworm faction that fought the techbro faction and got them kicked out of the throne room. Think Russell Vought and the OMB, not Elon. Elon registered his disapproval of the huge science cuts in the President’s budget request. The nominated techbro NASA administrator was cancelled because he wasn’t anti-science enough.
Ygg2 · 1d ago
> ruled by a violent senile pedophile and his deranged crackhead enablers
Which one?
If you want to blame anyone, try the financial sector and financialization of everything. They fed the conflagration and created perfect condition for Trump-like figure to rise.
t0lo · 1d ago
It's a very worthwhile story to follow imo :)
crinkly · 1d ago
I work for one of the largest financial companies. It's not us or the sector. There's a whole shadow sector behind the scenes doing this stuff run by billionaire funded think tanks who manipulated tech markets and leverage political and social manipulation through their connections. It's the world we live in but we didn't create it.
Shit education leads to pliable humans leads to social manipulation leads to desired outcomes from marketing efforts.
tonyhart7 · 1d ago
is that same people that I was thinking????
I know they all one to blame even they control government
crinkly · 1d ago
Well there's quite a few of them who are ideologically aligned.
t0lo · 5h ago
Is this in the same vein as those who are influencing the republican party or something a little more discreet. A hint never hurt
Ygg2 · 1d ago
I don't blame any particular sector in particularly but everyone is guilty in aggregate. And this has been going on for decades.
At the end of the day it's what capitalism is best at maximizing efficiency, and externalizing the risks to someone else.
kortilla · 1d ago
The tech industry overwhelmingly voted against Trump. Pick a different boogeyman
ch33zer · 1d ago
The workers did, the people with money welcomed him with open arms hoping for less regulation and big contracts. Look in the row behind trump during his inauguration if you need proof.
kortilla · 1d ago
they only welcomed him after he won in a big ring kissing competition (apart from Musk and a famous VC or two of course)
watwut · 1d ago
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.
ivewonyoung · 1d ago
> 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.
watwut · 1d ago
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.
mittensc · 1d ago
who did most of the tech billionaires sponsor?
derektank · 1d ago
Most tech billionaires didn't endorse anyone because the election was close and they wanted to avoid scrutiny by either party. A few high profile tech billionaires endorsed Donald Trump
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 1d ago
...and you still didn't get your Praxis nation! Ha!
admissionsguy · 1d ago
Good, space program run by the government was very wasteful for many decades.. scientific missions were nice but also a bit of extravagant luxury
const_cast · 1d ago
Yes, nothing more extravagant than... science? What a... luxury? Really? This is the take we're going with? Okay.
And, on the topic of "extravagant luxury" - nobody is saving any money. Do you think you're gonna get a check in the mail with the "savings" we get from cutting NASA? Come on.
The reality is that we're cutting everything and our debt is skyrocketing. We're not saving anything, we're actually losing money at a more rapid pace. You're being robbed by republican fiscal policy.
It's a lose-lose. Maybe maaaaaaaaybe, if we were REALLY saving a TON of money these cuts could be justifiable. But, we're not. We're saving -2 Trillion dollars. Baby that's your tax money.
magicloop · 1d ago
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 votes, as politicians obviously try to maintain their voter base as a consideration in their decisions.
Note historically a criticism of the original lunar mission was that USA diverted funds from hospitals and other public programs to fund the mission. So some were bitter despite the triumph.
It goes back to the fundamental conundrum. You have a back of corn. Do you plant the corn, or eat the corn? If AI delivers for America (planting the corn) and USA lands on Mars, these 4k NASA employees will not dwell in the public imagination despite our respect for their commitment, skill and service.
mrtksn · 1d ago
Good framing but IMHO it’s a bit like thinking by analogy.
Last time, USA was behind in space race and they didn’t just use what they already had to go to the moon, instead they started a huge movement that inspired and educated generations of scientist and engineers. this redeemed all the issues with cutting services from other places to go to the moon.
This time around, it looks like a desperate attempt to do something that worked in the past and looks impressive on face value, but it’s actually empty inside.
Last time, huge number of people were provided with resources and education that had outstanding impact on America, much much more than the act of landing on the moon did by itself.
This time you get resources directed to a generation of hateful people and sex offenders who use the already available technology to produce a show.
nradov · 1d ago
There is zero chance that humans will land on Mars before the end of the current administration. It isn't technically feasible. They are not seriously planning on this.
maxerickson · 1d ago
I don't think we should underestimate how poor their grasp of technical reality might be.
MisterSandman · 1d ago
And I hate to say it, but in this context, Musk would’ve been at least a little useful in having around. I’m aware he’s not the best person to make reliable predictions, but he does run SpaceX.
With both the cuts to NASA and Musk leaving the core inner circle of Trump, space exploration is going to be set back. Mars ain’t happening in our lifetimes, IMO.
I hope I’m wrong.
AngryData · 1d ago
I don't see how Musk could help in any way. He isn't an engineer, and the problems with space exploration are still pure engineering problems. You might as well be asking the CEO of Ford to come to your house and help you replace your cam bearings on a Nissan.
notahacker · 1d ago
He isn't an engineer but does have considerably more willingness to listen to and understand engineers than the rest of the administration.
If nothing else, he's aware that there's a bit more involved in getting humans to Mars on any timeline than just rockets, and slashing the budget of the only entity working on those problems might not speed up getting there...
If course, he also knows enough to know nobody's sending manned missions to Mars in the next launch window regardless of whose in charge, and he's been quite fond of breaking stuff recently so I'm not sure we want Elon in charge either.
myvoiceismypass · 1d ago
Elon Musk? The guy who said we would have unmanned missions to mars by 2026 and manned missions by 2030? He's just as insane and full of dookie as the rest of em.
giantg2 · 1d ago
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.
nradov · 1d ago
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.
oceanplexian · 1d ago
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.
giantg2 · 1d ago
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.
giantg2 · 1d ago
"Some of the critical components don't exist yet and development can't be significantly accelerated."
Such as?
15155 · 1d ago
So have they announced this theoretical 2026 mission yet? How does this work with one single launch window remaining?
verzali · 1d ago
They're not going to land on Mars by 2028.
oceanplexian · 1d ago
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.
Balgair · 1d ago
Yes, but the administration doesn't know that.
UncleMeat · 1d ago
There are 3.5 years left in the administration. The time between Apollo 1 and Apollo 11 was 2.5 years. At its closest point, Mars is more than 100 times further away than the Moon. Just a trip there takes like nine months when delivering small payloads that don't need to return. And you need to time it so that you plan the mission when mars and earth are very near each other, which is only every couple of years.
The idea that the Trump administration could put a man on mars before the end of their term, even if this was a very top priority is ludicrous.
perihelions · 1d ago
> "before their current term expires"
> "This mirrors the political, prestige, and technology triumph of the Kennedy administration"
Trump may have said "before my term ends"; what JFK said was "before this decade is out".
IMHO, this is like a diametric opposite of Richard M. Nixon landing on the moon, two presidencies after Kennedy (and of opposite party); acting for Americans' obvious shared interests (not personal vanity); being the final link in an unbroken chain of sustained, stable governance. We've lost the capacity for greatness of that era. We don't have that, that chain of stable governance in service of national interests; what we have is an attention-deficient narcissist, capriciously destroying every great American thing that exists which doesn't have name attached.
(Ironically, the thing Kennedy so fervently competed against no longer exists today. That fearsome adversary, the triumph of Sputnik and Gagarin, was also demolished in this century by a Trump-like figure, spouting vapid promises of greatness as he vandaled and looted it to the ground).
lostmsu · 1d ago
> a Trump-like figure, spouting vapid promises of greatness
Can't pinpoint who you are referring to. Gemini thinks Yeltsin? But neither it nor I remember any "greatness" promises from the guy.
perihelions · 1d ago
Putin made a number of incredibly grandiose promises about Russia's progress in space (and in technology and engineering generally), as he dismantled and looted Roscosmos over the past twenty years—gifting away its wealth to oligarch allies. The Russian space capability is a shadow of its former self, barely able to maintain its old Soviet rocket production. Their ISS modules, if you've been following, are quite literally falling apart from negligence—leaking toxic gases and such.
Here's a generic example of the flavor of Russia's non-credible space propaganda—stuff their government says, like Trump, that's an enormous lie, that everyone knows is a lie:
To be fair, Russian space stagnated since before him. The current fallout is caused by somebody actually bothering to move forward.
asacrowflies · 1d ago
Putin you idiot.
jeffbee · 1d ago
> land on Mars before their current term expires
As a nation we need to figure out how you, probably a person who considers yourself a functioning adult member of society, came to believe and even repeat this.
theshackleford · 1d ago
> The real game the current administration is playing is to land on Mars before their current term expires.
This will literally not happen and anyone who thinks it will needs to seek professional help.
asacrowflies · 1d ago
This is nothing but lies and bullshit ....landing a man on Mars in the next three years is so batshit insane I worry for your sanity.
dextrous · 1d ago
Politics aside, according to a pretty comprehensive study (118 missions) it does seem that SpaceX is much more efficient than NASA [1]. Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea. Maybe this conclusion is biased somehow, or perhaps the purpose of a dedicated govt org is different in some way that justifies its budget and scope despite the difference in efficiency?
SpaceX is pretty efficient at space launches, and has gotten there using a lot of NASA guidance and funding.
NASA does a lot more than space launches, and they do use private sector (including SpaceX) for most of their launches.
azinman2 · 1d ago
NASA does far more science research than spacex.
samrus · 1d ago
Efficiency is important for public institutions but not the highest priority. The highest priority is public service. These institutions should have public good as their north star, not shareholder value
charcircuit · 1d ago
How are those any different considering the public are essentially the shareholders.
samrus · 10h ago
No the public is the customer. The difference is between the postal service being profitable and not losing your packages. If not losing packages costs too much for them to be profitable, then the public would want them to operate at a cost but make sure all packages arrive safely
kevindamm · 1d ago
They compare cost, speed-to-market, schedule, and scalability, but it looks like they ignore failed launches and consider all missions successful?
I couldn't find a comparison of the number of launch failures between the two, my recollection is that this happened a lot more often in SpaceX rockets. But maybe that's included in the cost overrun figures and still puts SpaceX ahead by an order of magnitude.
I agree with the thesis of the paper, that platforms and incremental advances are more efficient and more economical. I don't quite agree that an incremental approach would have worked well for the NASA efforts in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps it should be considered as an option for these large organizations, but I'm not convinced it's always better.
Also, to do this study fairly, you would have to set up SpaceX to not benefit from any of the advances made by NASA for the decades beforehand. Some step-function style advances did happen under NASA supervision that benefitted the entire scientific community.
notahacker · 1d ago
Also looks like the paper explicitly said it wasn't doing a public/private sector comparison so much as observing that SpaceX doing repeatable stuff in LEO on short timelines delivered without the cost overruns of NASA doing more complex one-offs over longer timelines and concluding that, surprise surprise, the repeatable stuff and incremental improvement stuff had much better cost control than the deep space science missions and space station enhancements. Yes, if you look at the raw number of missions SpaceX has operated, most of them have been successful Falcon 9 launches and most of them have been to deploy minisats to a standard design, and its track record of these is excellent (including adding reusability). NASA's track record would look a lot better if it mostly launched satellite constellations to LEO too and better still if it held off on planning anything in deep space, but that's not really what NASA is for. If you look at SpaceX in terms of private programmes rather than missions, the Falcon 9 is outstanding and the Starlink minisats work, the Falcon Heavy seems fine, Starship has been going on a very long time (including work before the Starship name was coined like the the Raptor engine) and hasn't achieved anything useful yet, and the stated goal of going to Mars hasn't got off the drawing board. But they're very, very good at building and delivering significant improvements on the repeatable stuff that isn't NASAs focus
Also, if you're doing a fair comparison between public and private sector you've got to consider all the launch startups that aren't SpaceX, including the ones that haven't successfully launched...
cosmicgadget · 1d ago
The question to ask is if NASA's numerous responsibilities and accomplishments should be owned by the People or by individuals. Efficiency is fixable.
belter · 1d ago
> Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea
How is that working out with the US Health Care System?
Strom · 1d ago
Better healthcare for fewer people. Might work well for space exploration.
Lord-Jobo · 1d ago
More like none healthcare for the bottom 20%, bankruptcy for the next 20%, and acceptable coverage for the rest.
Great system...
jancsika · 1d ago
So just like for-profit health care customers must avoid rural regional hospitals hollowed out by VCs to be able to gain the better outcomes in a system hurdling toward catastrophe, space explorers must carefully avoid paths of a growing amount of space debris in a LEO system also hurdling toward catastrophe.
In both cases, I don't think the system works well without assuming spherical cows or something like that.
Edit: ah, I see it's "hurtling." Although I guess in both cases you have to dodge larger and larger geographic regions to claim success, so a bit like hurdling. :)
bix6 · 1d ago
Better how? Less dollars in means worse, more expensive care for those who can afford
samrus · 1d ago
Screwing over regular people didnt work out too well for that one guy though ...
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...
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
With the US becoming a fascist state in record time, I do not foresee people following your thinking, unfortunately...
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, ever.
Where they financed by the government? Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets and say that their return-on-investment was awesome, but that doesn't mean buying lottery tickets is a good idea.
A lot of his work occurred while he was what we'd now call a tenured professor of mathematics, again at a universe with an impressive amount of money being donated directly by the British government.
In general, the history of higher learning is the history of governments (or the wealthy people who constitute them) funding research and facilities. You may not like it, but you shouldn't misrepresent history just to make your preferences sound more normal.
(Leibniz had a more complex web of patrons over the course of the decades, including parts of German and French governments and even briefly being a Royal Society fellow. Some of Leibniz's patrons did include private [rich] donors, but it is said that Leibniz was the last scientist/mathematician to find patronage in that way/the last time in history that private donors had shown much interest in direct science/math patronage.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society
And that's Eru (and perhaps you) here. Pubic science continues to make fantastic moves forward, with one notable example being nearly ALL the meaningful research and engineering moving us towards nuclear fusion being based on public research. Historically, major contributors to research almost universally had significant government funding.
It's true that we can gesture to AI research recently as a fruitful place for private research, but even orgs like Deepmind took government grants. Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers.
In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Science consistently betters society as a whole, and it's almost impossible to identify in advance what theoretical or practical breakthroughs in any given field are about to become significant.
Can you back that up? Be sure to only include examples of private industry that wasn't supported or backed by the government and didn't depend on prior government advancements to make their advancements
You're not making an argument, you're just intentionally misunderstanding. Sorry, I'm not going to respond if all you want to do is troll
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Not to mention that smart people generally prefer to live in places that value and protect science, so it's _also_ an indirect form of geopolitical talent recruitment. (See brain drain + brain gain impacts of science policy, for instance. There's a strong argument to be made that US mid-20th-century dominance in science and engineering was largely driven by a lot of very smart people fleeing Nazi Germany.)
Basic science isn't so much a lottery ticket as a bond with unknown maturity measured in decades, a _very_ high rate of return, a high minimum investment, and dividend-like payouts created by adding skilled scientists, engineers, etc. to your tax base.
[1] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state...
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:
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.
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). 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. 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...Maybe I'm wrong, and if so I apologise! But as soon as I saw the essay like format, I knew I wasn't going to spend time on it. I think shorter points that provoke discussion may work better here.
> I feel your post is too long
It’s about 700 words.
It’s thought through, well-written, neatly organized, and it’s a fine set up for further discussion.
If that’s too long for you on this forum, then I’d probably take a look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.
But also, this is HN. I wouldn't have this conversation on Twitter and I hope we can have more nuanced conversations here, as well as I hope the average user has a bit more intelligence/attention than a place like Reddit. Maybe I'm assuming incorrectly
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 ready to pick up the torch [1].
[1] https://www.fdd.org/analysis/policy_briefs/2025/03/19/aiming...
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 though.
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 now. That's the way JumpCrisscross used it (and I very much don't think they agree that this is how the gov should be working). But the way you're using it is "I'd rather have the $10 tomorrow".
I'm pointing this out because now people are talking past one another. I'm pointing this out because it is a really common pattern ("now" vs "later") that is used and frequently causes miscommunication due to different assumptions about what we want (e.g. "maximize money now" or "maximize money during x period of time"). Though it doesn't always have to do with money.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705004
[1] Be careful to not trivialize this. The numbers are abstract as well as the points in time. Also consider that $1 now might be far more valuable than $10 tomorrow. For example, if you get $1 now you might be able to afford a bus ticket to a location where you can get $1m, but only if you get there today. That's worth a lot more than $10 tomorrow. So we have to be mindful of what conditions actually exist if we want to actually communicate. Unfortunately, these are usually assumed and not communicated... The people that want to just take the money are well aware of this tendency...
If you can't differentiate then we'll only be able to talk past one another
Is MAGA messaging on these NASA cuts?
My impression is these cuts are being done in the background. The beasts being fed are the military-industrial complex (specifically, its rotation from legacy providers to Silicon Valley) and ICE.
That’s it! That’s the strategy!
Sometimes better amounts to "still bad" as in here, but it is still a bunch of claims that make Conservatives lead by Trump sound much better then what they actually are.
I'm not excusing anyone. But you are picking fights with people on your own team. So maybe pay closer attention to what people say and not just signaling. Personally I want to fix things, not pick random needless fights. I want to stop chaos, not create more. Picking fights is just what Trump wants you to do
I think that if you project wrong motivations on them, you wont understand how they "deluded" themselves nor prevent yourself to fall for the same trap. If their motivation is "scientists are liberals and I want to hurt them" or "I want actually Christian conservative religious state and these institutions are threat to that goal", no amount of theorizing about money saving will get you to the understanding.
If you want to start with understanding someone's motivation, you can not start by projecting best most palatable motivations on them. Nor should you start be projecting worst ones ... but that is NOT where we are or were for years.
For years, conservatives and especially Trump had best possible motivations projected on them. And it only served to their benefit. The whole center ended up not believing their goals, even as they stated or wrote about them regularly. The whole center was busy policing those who actually listened to conservatives and very accurately predicted what they will do. Again and again.
> Personally I want to fix things, not pick random needless fights. I want to stop chaos, not create more.
You are not stopping the chaos by making what is going on more palatable by sane washing it. It just empowers the chaos.
> Picking fights is just what Trump wants you to do
No, Trump want us all to act like republicans do. Never argue with him, enable enable enable. Praise him and kiss his behind.
If you hate Trump so much I highly suggest not supporting him
> 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
You, in reply, wrote:
> The real issue is essentially: which would you rather have, $1 now or $10 tomorrow?[1]
I'm saying you're wrong. There is not a choice to be made. We want the $10 tomorrow. No rational person can disagree with this if the person making the choice is the US federal government, who can spend money into existence. If we have some use for $1 now, just spend that $1 into existence too! Then, tomorrow, we'll have the $10 too!
If you agree with the cuts, you must logically agree that they are a bad investment: that $1 today will net us 75 cents tomorrow.
Actually, you really should read my whole comment and be careful to not read things my comment doesn't say.
To circle back,
A corollary to this is "miscommunication [frequently] happens when we make inaccurate assumptions about the position of others". Let's not go putting words in other people's mouths.I understand now that you are just making a semi-wanky abstract point about the nature of rhetoric and descisionmaking for its own sake, and I apologize for misunderstanding this.
Meanwhile the USDA, FWS, and DOE do those pesky regulatory things, like making it so you can't torture animals quite as much in the pursuit of profits, can't build coal power plants in the center of national parks, and can't dump raw chemical waste into your local wetlands. Utter killjoys they are.
Like, not meaning to be shitty to you in specific, but it's no secret why these agencies are getting targeted. If you say anything the admin doesn't like, or dare to tell people with money that they can't do literally anything they want at all times irrespective of it's effects on broader society, you've got a target on your back.
I listened to way too much Rush Limbaugh in the 90s and none of this stuff is a surprise. Distressing, but exactly what this particular segment of Republicans have been working towards.
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 absurd regulations.
My grandfather fought for years with USFWS to be able to re-build infrastructure for a small town near a popular wilderness area. A small bridge upstream washed away one year and they refused to allow rebuilding it.
The claim was that rebuilding the small bridge would disturb some endangered fish species. So instead hundreds or thousands of vehicles every summer would drive through that small river instead to get to the wilderness area beyond. That created a lot more destruction and impact on the fish. Trucks and vehicles wash off a lot of oil and chemicals like that.
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.
Personally I’d hope for competent staff to be creating thoughtful valuable environmental impact surveys. Hence why the pushback on these agencies is valuable. Bureaucracies generally need some sort of pressure to, you know, do a competent job.
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.
The federal government now accepts donations if you don't want the money.
This is silly. I prefer the money be spent on things that have a larger ROI, collectively, than I can attain individually. Destroying the money doesn't achieve that aim.
Irrelevant to the silliness of suggesting destroying money as a solution.
So no, I don't want to Venmo cash to somebody who doesn't need it.
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...
[citation needed]
Private companies these days just buy all their competitors to minimize accountability and maximize shareholder returns.
Many people grossly underestimate restarting a stopped process which took tremendous inertia to get rolling at the first place.
For all practical purposes its almost like you permanently lose the ability.
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.
This is exactly how anyone would describe your reply. Your claim is so bizzare and its logic so convoluted that the only reason I can imagine for it is political motivation. But I could be wrong and don't want to get into a flamewar. So let's ignore the reasons and reassess the logic instead. Most of the counter I can come up with are variations of what the other commenter replied, so I will leave that to them. Instead, let's look at why your argument never pans out.
Private companies always look for short to medium term profits, since it affects their balance sheets and ultimately their survival. That constraint isn't favorable for scientific research and science missions, because there is a long lead time for the research results to be converted into a commercially viable products. Some companies with a large product portfolio and steady profits still do some research, as long as it isn't too costly or time consuming. An example is the pharma industry.
But science involving the biosphere, atmosphere, astronomy/astrophysics, space, interplanetary missions etc are on the other end of that spectrum - extremely costly and no commercialization for the foreseeable future. The only way private industries are going to do it is if the government funds them with short term profits - in which case, it's the government's program, not the industry's. Even Musk's Mars dream is dependent on government funding in that manner, though his intent isn't science either. What makes you think the private industry will take it upon themselves to fund and conduct research that makes no economic sense?
Exactly. Like if I am an uber driver and I bring a surgeon to a hospital, it counts as me doing surgery since the most important part of surgery is the process of driving to the place where it happens
A friend of mine had her division's headcount cut by >80% that was all research focused and building instruments for deep space observation. No one is hiring people to do that in the private sector. Dozens of astrophysics PhDs in that division alone are now without work and with no real prospects doing anything related to what they've dedicated their entire lives to (and accepted modest salaries as civil servants to do).
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/world/europe/china-recrui...
https://asiatimes.com/2024/12/what-uk-fighter-pilots-did-and...
And finally, the official response: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/former-armed-forces-perso...
It comes down to money and private interests dominating Western politics. It has bad but also good sides. Human conflict used to be about extermination a few thousand years ago, that is what I think of when I read such headlines, such things can actually also be seen as progress. We now have priorities other than our tribe or nation, that has good sides too. I like the Napoleonic war story where Napoleon gave a medal to a British scientist, Humphry Davy.
While bad for the nation, I try to see it as a mixed bag that people from the top down are... flexible.
The price we pay is, possibly, worse outcomes in conflicts. What we gain is that after conflicts end we get back to normal life - with one another - very quickly and relatively easily.
That puts you in a uniquely disadvantageous position.
And having worked on some classified systems doesn't preclude employment in related fields. It does restrict what you can share, of course.
He's just so stupid that's equivalent to that.
For a long time Trump has been repeating Russian talking points like he invented them. The best asset is the one who never sees how he’s being played.
Only recently Trump has realized that Putin doesn’t actually do what he says, and you can tell he is genuinely surprised by this revelation.
In this case, all of the downsizing that has been happening is right out of the Heritage Foundation playbook, literally.
And those plans are largely a manifestation of Kevin Roberts' political beliefs. He, in his book, has said things such as:
> "many of America's institutions...need to be burned"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn%27s_Early_Light:_Taking_B...
This executive has been criticized as using a hatchet and not a scalpel in their downsizing options precisely because their fundamental driving belief is that all of it is waste and abuse. They don't want any of it.
I bet plenty have that useful "unwritten institutional knowledge" that could help newer programs. (F.ex. instructions for a nuclear waste storage said to use kitty litter, but didn't say it was because it was a cheap source of bentonite clay; someone substituted some modern paper variant and caused a small nuclear incident).
Friend of mine is a contractor for NASA who has been trained as a parts engineer for sourcing and testing electronic components that go into satellites and spacecrafts will be out of a job in a few months as her entire branch is eliminating all contractor positions.
Now she has a specialized skillset that isn't very readily transferable to other local companies and industries.
Sucks. Can't imagine she's the only one from NASA facing this crisis.
Between Starlink, OneWeb, Kuiper, plus a gazillion startups like Astranis, K2 Space, etc, not to mention defense satellites, there has never been a time when more satellites have been launched by the U.S.
I think your friend will be fine. The real issue is the capability loss for NASA.
Is it typical for companies in the satellite design/manufacturing space for parts/electrical components engineers to be able to work remotely outside of travelling for inspections/supplier audits/component testing?
The bottom line is, she would be very likely to get a good salary, even better than she did in the US, in China, Russia, or India, which are desperately seeking space specialists with experience in more advanced technologies.
It is a shame that the US couldn't even keep their payroll, forcing them to leave the country and flow to its enemies.
However, China is now the country with the most potential to engage in a full-scale war with the US. It was Russia, but it is now stuck with Ukraine, and probably for years ahead.
And Russell Vought is holding the weapon.
Similar sentiment is felt about any other organization run by people who are seen as having had a hand in kneecapping NASA - working for their companies is not appealing. Perhaps her views will change after she's had more time to process the sting of the layoff notice.
And her prior work for the DoD left her with an extraordinarily bad impression of the culture. Admittedly she'd only worked at a single Navy Yard and different branches in different services can have different cultures, but nevertheless - the DoD is not appealing either. Depending on the results of her job search, that might change.
For Amazon Kuiper - no relevant roles are available in the region and, as far as what's listed on the website, there's no jobs that allow for working remotely outside of relevant travel.
Blue Origin...same issue as with Kuiper - remote work doesn't seem to be a thing and they've no local presence with relevant jobs available.
Those companies are transportation companies when it comes to space.
Someone ex-NASA may well have deep experience in certain specific areas which few other candidates could claim.
The thing about a voluntary "deferred resignation program" – the people most likely to take it are those who are confident they can find good opportunities somewhere else. If you didn't have that confidence, you'd be much less likely to sign on to it.
So....the same challenges that everyone working in the private sector has? What am I missing here?
Still - it appears to be a tremendously hurdle for her to find alternate employment with her skillset in parts engineering without physically relocating - which would necessitate selling her house and her husband finding employment at the new region as well.
What we do about it is educate the public and form institutions that are motivated to protect these people. We failed on the former and now it's disrupting the latter.
Deciding whether I should care about another group based on whether they care about my own predicament is a straight path to evil.
Do doctors really belong on that list? In my personal experience-I’m not a doctor, but lots of people in my family are, including my mother and brother (and when she finishes med school, my sister too)-I really don’t get the impression doctors are poorly paid at all. If we talk about those with established careers (so not junior doctors), the poorly paid ones are still earning twice what the average person does, and the better paid ones are off the charts. On average, medicine pays better than software engineering.
Oh, and I’m in Australia-in the US, medical salaries are even better than they are in Australia. Like take what people get paid in Australia and add 50%. Yes, American doctors would owe more in student loans-but when you are on US$400K, and the average US medical school debt is under US$300K, how long is it going to take you to pay it off?
Great that you care? And what are you dong about it? Are you voluntarily paying more taxes to your local city/council/state?
In America we ostensibly participate in a representative democracy founded on the sentiment of no taxation without representation, and so our first duty is to be politically involved by educating ourselves holistically, voting appropriately for our local, state and federal representatives, participating in accompanying community building, wealth and knowledge dissemination in order to create and maintain the institutions which I mentioned in my previous comment.
People work at NASA because they believe in the mission. So if they are leaving now they either stopped believing in the future of NASA because of this or they were money motivated and sucked.
And what exactly is left of the mission now? Not much to keep working for in that regard
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 in the room and is a complete disaster. It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better. You can debate some of the specifics, sure, but if all this current state of uncertainty brings is a clean slate and new ways of thinking in 4 years, that’s better IMHO than looking back 4 years from now watching NASA brute force a token moon landing on the back of ancient technology. Which they may still do!
It’s more accurate to say that Congress needs an overhaul. Over the years NASA administrators have pushed back on SLS to the fullest extent you’d expect, but it’s not their call how Congress allocates money.
Losing career managers, scientists and engineers isn’t going to fix any of the things you want to see fixed.
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: you need to restart every some years, to not stagnate.
From what I've seen, if you want to stamp out a young engineers creativity, start them working in a big org.
Fortunately other, more rational countries, will fill the gaps. They’ve just been complacent because the US was on its game for so long. Especially the ESA.
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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.
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My time working with some of the brightest minds in my industry taught me that they aren't necessaily some visionary, nor super genius, nor even some workaholic putting 20+ hours a day into their craft (though I have met a few I would describe as such). The gap between me and them wasn't over some raw intellect. It was many times a matter of me thinking of an idea and them talking about how that was tried 5-20 years ago and why that lead down a huge rabbit hole.
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.
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 that.
>This was put in my first comment with severe intent, that many seemed to have missed.
The comment itself definitely reveals more than a light suggestion.
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.
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.
The standard phrase "institutional knowledge" merely refers to knowledge and skills that are carried by members of the organization. This is often much more than what is formally codified into the processes and training materials. As such, it can lead to loss of capability when there is too much turnover.
You seem to be conflating it with some other kind of bureaucratic conservatism or group-think. While that is a common dysfunction of long-running organizations, I think it is an orthogonal characteristic.
That is quite the absolute statement. Could you share some data to back this up?
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Is the future going to be completely defunding science for 4 (or 8) years and then whipsawing back to normal levels once the republicans lose power?
It seems like as long as the parties are close to popularity of each other and one party is explicitly anti science there is no way to build anything sustainable. This is no way to run a country.
There's more to life than "innovation", but what you say tracks, I was part of an organization that became extremely innovative but went bust in the process.
> we have Space X.
Which is amazing for earth-orbit commercial launches, but doesn't move the needle for the many other things NASA concerns itself with, like research as mentioned elsewhere.
Jim Keller’s own biography kind of dispels this notion. He worked at DEC for 16 years when he was a young engineer (24-40 years old).
And the normalisation of the language of totalitarianism continues.
I don’t disagree, but it’s grim.
My dream outcome would be that they shrink down the bureaucracy massively, retire a lot of the career middle managers who make sure nothing ever moves too fast and no project is allowed to run lean, and then raise pay for the remaining people to attract some of the private sector talent that could infuse some new knowledge. The few people I know with SpaceX experience are not at all happy with the work environment there, but the pay and pace of a place like NASA aren’t an option for them.
But there's a few programs that have these types of problems, not just NASA. IMO, there's probably more efficient ways to meet each goal, by decoupling the problem. But either way, we can't solve "the problem" unless we actually recognize what it is (and there's a lot more than what I've just mentioned)
[0] https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nasainthe50states/
They don't call it the Senate Launch System for nothing
I’ve worked with a few former NASA employees now.
They all said the same thing: There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks. Getting anything done was impossible because you had to navigate webs of org structure and process that had been designed to make work and jobs for people, not to deliver results.
My one ex-NASA coworker got a lot of mileage out of telling people he worked for NASA, putting it on his LinkedIn, and mentioning it when he introduced himself to new people. People respect the name. It was a stark contrast to how he described his actual time there.
Which do you think takes a severance package?
The national labs are also a lot like this.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
People aren't inspired by safe shipping lanes. But quite a few are alive because of what global shipping enables.
Captain Phillips was a pretty good movie.
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 past year. Chances are many people couldn't name something NASA achieved in the past year. Would it be at the 2% number? I don't know.
I'm not saying one is better than the other. I think both should look for budget inefficiency, but until those are identified I wouldn't propose budget cuts. But it does seem that the NASA missions could be more inspiring recently.
US Military FY 2024 enacted budget: ≈ $842 billion
VS
NASA FY 2024 enacted budget: ≈ $24.9 billion
That is a ~35x multiplier. By bog-standard logical implication your question answers itself.
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.
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 something like starship were operational. NASA dragging its feet for decades, building silly things likes SLS, trying to find token uses to justify it, doesn’t inspire me anymore.
The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.
Happens all the time.
Europe vs us east vs us west.
Putting people on the moon today is a lot less substantive, and doing it with decades old technology makes it even less so.
I see the correlation you're trying to draw: "neither is of any practical use", but I think even that ignores the very deliberate effects the first space race had on the USSR.
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 much congressional meddling has gone on, though.
Money for SLS is separate part of the budget, its mismanagement causes reputational damage - MSR budget is part of NASA probe budget, mismanagement there causes stall, worse performances and cancellations for AWFUL amount of other projects
MSR is a fine enough concept though, I think Rocket Lab's proposal to get it done is sound and the government should take them up on the offer. If nothing else, the money to Rocket Lab for MSR development would help to make Rocket Lab a more viable SpaceX competitor, which should pay off for the US government in the long run.
The entire space coast of Florida was built on this, from Kennedy Space Center down to Jupiter, FL.
The sad reality is in the US, too many towns were built around a very specific and niche business. Coal in the Appalachian mountains, NASA and the space coast, Pittsburgh Steel… it’s a community plan that failed and yet is still being used today. Woe to those that move/live there.
Isn't the greater likelihood that delivery of service will drop as a result of the cuts and they'll point to this to justify nullifying the entire programme?
The universe... what a concept. You know, the universe is a little bit like the human hand. For example, you have Grumann's center right here and then you have Undiscovered Worlds and uh, um and Sector 8 and up here is Tittleman's Crest so you can kinda picture it's a little bit like a leaf or uhh, umm, it's not a bowl. Do you know that when you look at a planet and you see that light, that planet's not even there! that's just a light, that's just your neighbor shining a flashlight right into your yard looking for coons, and he says "what are you doing in my backyard? with that flashlight?" and i told him "i'm shining, i'm shining in the window so I can teach your son about the universe" he said "get out of my yard and why are you communicating to my son? why are you in all black? behind my bushes shining a light into my house?" and i said "i'm teaching your son about the universe! i'm shining a light, shining a light right in there and exploring his room as he's looking out and exploring the universe!" i turn the light off and i see your son go to bed and i turn the light back on and i do swirls on his wall like a comet's tail. i do this every night with your son.
Anyhoo, NASA letting so many people resign is good if your opinion is such that lowering government expenditure is a good thing. So long as the exit package is comparable to retirement package these government employees would have got otherwise. My guess is the resignation package has great near term performance but low long term (retirement) performance, making it a great option for younger workers able to pivot to new careers.
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Americans seem to expect lots of flag waving and spaceships. Less fundamental science.
NASA's science missions have been incredible.
The James Webb Space Telescope, a 6.5-meter-diameter infrared telescope at Lagrange Point 2 that can measure the atmospheric chemistry of planets orbiting other stars and measure the spectra of galaxies that were around 10 billion years ago.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars by being lowered to the ground from a rocket-powered "sky-crane." It was powered by a radioactive battery, has been driving around and taking measurements for more than a decade, and has shown that Mars was likely habitable billions of years ago.
What kind of inspiration do you feel is lacking there?
SLS isn't great but it does.. you know.. work.
Which it was capable of doing all along—Congress and NASA lied about this, misled the public, to make it appear that their jobs-creating, pork-barrel project was serving some genuine need NASA had. It wasn't! They had alternatives all along—they were pretending they didn't.
When you read about these things, you have to know all the actors you're getting information from, and what motives they have to mislead you.
There's not a single real mission in NASA's budget, or conceivable future budget, that needs an SLS—full stop. Sole exception being the moon project, which was created with the express purpose of finding a problem SLS would be the only answer for (and even that's now in doubt, what with Starship).
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.
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.
https://idlewords.com/2024/05/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
> 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.
https://youtu.be/XFIvKSVRtZ0
https://youtu.be/sGT-8PHSVso
Consequently, it can't do a Moon mission like the Saturn V could, it requires the idiotic nonsense that is the NHRO, which will endanger astronauts because it can't get Orion (which is a whole other can of pork) into a low lunar orbit. It also can't handle the lander, so now Artemis has to count on SpaceX and/or Blue Origin for that, which is probably what you're alluding to not working. But if those don't work, then neither does Artemis and then how can you say SLS works?
Another problem with SLS is it's expensive AF and has a terrible launch cadence. Maybe you think that doesn't really matter, but it is for those reasons that NASA isn't going to test Orion again before putting astronauts on it. The last time they tested Orion, to verify the design and modelling, the heat shield started to come apart. But NASA can't do another test flight, because SLS sucks so hard, so instead they're going to fly Orion on an untested trajectory and trust their modeling to keep astronauts safe. Their same modeling which failed to predict Orion performance the first time. It's homicidally reckless. There is a real risk of this becoming yet another instance of NASA management's "go culture" getting people killed. Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, each time they say they've learned their lesson and will make changes to ensure it doesn't happen again, but either those changes are only superficial or they decay over time. We're now on the precipice of NASA management flying astronauts around the Moon with a heat shield which may quite possibly disintegrate during reentry, because SLS is too expensive for NASA to test it but NASA management wants to move forward anyway.
Maybe I'm missing some details but I thought the entire purpose of first-stage rockets was to get a certain payload with certain max dimensions (what can fit inside a cylinder of a certain height and radius) to LEO, or the equivalent delta-V. At that point first stage is discarded anyway. So what exactly the payload is (beyond its dimensions) and you do with your payload after getting to LEO (or equiv delta V) that shouldn't really make a difference, and you can't blame the first stage (which SLS is) for that if it did its job.
In the case of SLS, Block I can get 95 metric tons, Block I-B can get 105 tons and Block II 130 tons.
The Falcon Heavy in comparison can only get max 64 tons to LEO, less if you want to recover boosters and the core to save money
The real winner is the Saturn V which could get 140 tons to LEO. I know it was expensive per launch (about $1 billion in 2025 dollars) but given all the billions we've blown on trying to develop cheaper tech it seemed like we could have just stuck with what we know worked
It makes a difference because if you're designing a rocket for a mission then you'll have a rocket that's as close to optimal for the mission, given mission requirements, timelines and budgets as you can reasonably get it. That's not SLS, the Moon mission wasn't planned when SLS was designed and instead SLS is optimized to reuse Shuttle hardware.
Being stuck with a rocket that wasn't designed for the mission, as well as the political decision to use Orion, severely compromise the planning of Artemis. SLS lacks the power to get Orion into a proper lunar orbit, so instead they're going to use a highly elliptical NHRO lunar orbit with an orbital period of 7 days. This is extremely dangerous, it means that if there is any sort of emergency on the moon the astronauts may have to wait as long as a week to get back to Orion; which is probably a death sentence. It also means the lander has to be huge to make up for SLS's inadequacy, which means the Artemis program now relies on the success of Starship HLS and/or Blue Origin's HLS. This is going to delay Artemis and the entire reason this dependency exists is because Congress wanted a shuttle-derived rocket foremost, and then made the situation even worse by saddling it with their Boeing pork capsule.
What it comes down to is SLS is a rocket that ""works"" but isn't actually good at anything and therefore never should have been built.
Well we don't have that. SLS isn't it and never will be. The most SLS can be is a heavy lift rocket that can be used once every few years with a lot of upfront notice. Certainly not "launch capable" at "any given time".
There are still maybe one or two cool jobs left at NASA like controlling the Voyager software. But I imagine everyone else at NASA who respects themselves would have left for SpaceX a long time ago, rather than waiting for Trump to incentivize their retirement. Half of all revenue collected by the US federal government in 2024 (totaling $2565 billion) was given to retirees. Mostly middle class and government retirees. So this policy shift is very aligned with the US status quo, which is paying people to do nothing, rather than having them go through the motions of tilting at bureaucratic windmills trying to do something.
Even in this thread you see how pervasive the attitude is. I've seen several comments here so far talking about how the economic system isn't giving them enough money, but I've yet to see anyone here express a willingness to eat ramen, sleep in the trenches, get their hands dirty, and endure whatever pain and peril it takes if it grants the opportunity to help out getting things done with space exploration. Those are the kinds of people who create material abundance.
Sending things to space is a small part of what NASA does. "Aeronautics" is not "space rocketry", and all federal agencies do more than what their name indicates.
Building spacecraft and space transportation systems like the shuttle came later and is a very different type of task.
Unfortunately, the more flamboyant manned space flight and science missions have gradually come to dominate NASA, and much of the fundamental tech research that made it possible in the first place has been deprioritized and defunded.
not everyone wants to work for a company that is well known for grinding 20-somethings into the dust with an extremely poor work-life balance.
That doesn't mean there are vacancies for NASA scientists studying other galaxies or asteroid petrology or the effects of orbit on bone health at SpaceX, or that moving to do comms links at SpaceX would necessarily represent career progression for the telescope designer.
Perhaps our coolest diplomacy program. I love that RU and USA have managed to cooperate in space through many decades of conflict.
Did the budget balloon and delays rack up? Yup, and if you read about why you will see that it was basically unavoidable. A private business would have canceled it at the first roadblock (depriving us of an INCREDIBLE scientific tool).
And for the actual launch and deployment, the cost of the instrument meant that a very high success rate was very very important. Go ahead and look up the success rate of space X launches and tell me you would put a multi billion dollar tool on their rocket. You need someone who can spend more money, even a lot more money, and guarantee success.
For example, when I worked at Boeing, sinking a die for a forging cost $250,000. Stamping out a forging cost a few dollars. When I was putting together a stack of identical electronic circuit boards, the first one took 2 hours. The last one took 15 minutes.
there are a huge amount of one time costs associated with the design and engineering of a spacecraft or a satellite that could enable fairly cheap constellations compared to singular satellites, and the testing regimen becomes much more cheap when it’s done as part of a campaign.
I’m a proponent for the disaggregation of satellites from sensors using specified interfaces. Industry is definitely moving in this direction with their satellite buses you can buy fairly cheaply.
Will we want to stick a $3 billion sensor onto a $15 million satellite? I can’t answer that question
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, don't get rid of the best people and programs; yeah, it doesn't work very well either. I've seen it tried in a few organizations, some have had a little success, most have not. What usually happens is that the most politically connected programs and people stay and the least are cut, and only after years of twaddling and overspending anyway. THe people that are there to cut things get swamped in meetings and smoke blown up their ass from every direction; they are made incompetent by design, and so the cuts are incompetent too.
I'm not about to say that I have any idea of the history of NASA spending cuts or those of the US gov in general. I know SLS is a dumb program but only because I know people that say that.
But, again, Hot Take, maybe the only thing left to try is the sledgehammer?
Cutting all probationary employees or recent promotions was just an awful strategy. For every department in the government.
It's several assumptions deep to get to that kind of statement which is even more.... Interesting.
First, you have to assume that all federal agencies are the same, so if one needs to be smaller or more efficient, clearly they all need to be. Or if you have experience with one agency, others must be the same. And that your personal experience is representative. This is hilarious for a category so broad that it includes homeland security and NASA.
Secondly, you have to get very reductive about the direction of these agencies. Big agencies? "Well we HAVE to do SOMETHING!" When of course "just leave it alone, go after the actually expensive and wasteful things in our economy like health insurance or the military" is ignored.
Thirdly you need to assume that anyone involved with actually managing this process gives a single shit about the issue at hand. And they don't. Nobody who gave a shit about efficiency, the size/budget of federal agencies, or the power of the federal government would vote to +265% the budget of ICE. that's year over year, by the way. Nor would they approve the largest deficit increase ever moved through congress.
These people are jangling keys in front of your face and taking the money out of your wallet. And by discussing these cuts in good faith at all, we are reaching for the keys.
The only thing left to do was the sledgehammer?
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.
On a more serious note, the administration's NASA budget is just completely nonsensical. I'm biased as a grantee, but the budget request called out our balloon experiment as should happen this year but refunded the balloon program (?!?). The congressional markups keep it so that's hopeful but there's still substantial uncertainty if we're actually going to Antarctica in ~3 months to fly our $20M experiment.
Even if all funding is ultimately secured will so many good people leave from the NASA balloon contractor that it will be difficult to have an Antarctic balloon campaign?
“You’re losing the managerial and core technical expertise of the agency,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society.
The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
All these discussions about efficiency, even more so the debt given they just blew up the debt to never before seen levels just shows that sincerity is not deserved when talking to Rs.
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.
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.
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.
also, in the US, taking exams in order to vote is a massively sensitive issue as it was one of the ways that blacks were restricted from voting even when they legally had the right
more technically, where do you draw the line? if it's too easy, you're going to insult people without even getting the desired effect. if it's too hard, then the demographic will skew towards people who work in the industries affected by the policy. for a second that sounds good, and when it comes to something like culture or maybe health, then sure, but there are many industries that would burn the world to the ground if it ensured them 20% annual growth. can you imagine if the only people able to vote on financial regulations were people who know a lot about finance? there'd be famines within the year
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001
Unfortunately the two choices are expansion and haphazard reduction
... I'll vote for you again!
Seems to be how that saying goes these days; and here I thought Bush had the dumbest possible ending for it.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/which-united...
"The U.S. budget deficit exploded in fiscal year 2009, ultimately reaching $1.4 trillion under President George W. Bush...The deficit would remain above $1 trillion throughout the 2012 fiscal year, but it was slashed to as low as $440 billion in the later years of Obama's presidency."
Comparing Biden to GWB doesn't make any sense. Their presidencies were 12 years apart and in very different circumstances.
Defunding NASA is about the tax cuts. NOAA is different.
I presume we’ll be paying up to $576,000 for a senior engineer (GS15) equivalent from SpaceX
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...
At least in past when people wanted to burn everything down they had a good reason. This is truly the dumbest period in human history.
One way to understand the election is a rejection of complexity - political complexity, social complexity, scientific complexity, economic complexity, moral complexity - these are all out of style. People seem very happy to ditch all of these in favor of kayfabe [0].
Of course, an empty narratives doesn't last; but once people get used to an empty narrative, they sometimes just move on to the next one. Just give them a face and a heel - things are much easier to understand that way.
Anyway, I feel like things might stay this way for a while.
It's definitely a real human experience to say "I know MY job is complicated, but that thing over there ought to be simple"
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
If we want a more efficient and inspiring NASA, we need to give it a mandate that we can all rally around the same way. "Pioneering the future of..." is just too generic for anyone to grade them against. As long as that's the case, congress is free to run it into the ground as a pork barrel repository.
IMO, several smaller, more focused, more measurable, organizations would serve the American public far better.
It's also fully independent of the government and thus not affected by all this Trump/Musk/DOGE stupidity, as much as Trump tries.
If you want the full argument it’s here: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/federal-reserve-independe...
I also don't think that bailing out SVB is a sign that Dodd-Frank was just symbolic, since not doing so would have pretty significantly hurt the USA's tech sector, which is is strategic nationally for the economy.
But I can see an argument for limiting the Fed's purview to mostly be about monetary policy and less about enforcement of legislation, as it's done in other countries.
Of course this is assuming they actually want these agencies to be more efficient and not just die, which is a big assumption.
I mean if you were tasked with "government efficiency" don't you think the lowest hanging fruit would be the Pentagon budget? But, sure, go after air traffic control instead.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-2026-budget-proposal...
SpaceX, which has been awarded tens of billions in government contracts from NASA, is making leaps and bounds over NASA? I think in 2022 almost 50% of SpaceX revenue was NASA contracts. All those leaps and bounds over NASA are literally NASA funded.
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 Alabama or wherever constantly trying to direct aspects of the project into their state, or to make the project serve their patrons' interests.
Of course, you could also say that up until recently, Elon himself was just as much of a patron, but still.
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 some ways, this isn't wrong. It's easier to get a private company to do that than to get NASA to do it
But this is wrong. NASA came up with requirements and awarded money to multiple companies (which is how high-risk contacting works -- hedging development by funding multiple companies), one of the companies they funded has been pretty successful, some of them unsuccessful, some are still in development.
The whole argument and perception that NASA and Spacex are somehow competitors just makes no sense to me. It's like saying something like, "The US Navy needed a new frigate and funded the development of it from HII and NASSCO. HII made an amazing new frigate, and NASSCO failed. OMG HII is so amazing why don't we just pay them to be the US Navy?"
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.
NASA's mission statement is "explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery".
SpaceX is a p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶d̶e̶d̶ privately held company whose mission is to increase shareholder value.
I’d note SpaceX is by far the most successful but by far not the only player in that space.
The brain drain and funding attack is on non military goals of NASA as well as on college and specifically graduate level people in the United States because they don’t ideologically align to the president. It’s a cultural revolution America style.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_Dawn
The mission is mars and the money making endeavors (starlink) are to bring in the cash to do that.
It's hard to believe that by now Musk still hasn't realized what a ridiculous idea this is.
That realization could explain his weird pivot into e.g. buying Twitter and far-right politics. A midlife crisis triggered by discovering that his childhood dream was just a fantasy.
Maybe one day Elon Musk will understand space as well as you do.
repeated explosions?
The thing that's exploding is Starship, which is still under development. Their production vehicles are among the most reliable in history. Falcon has a 99% mission success rate a 95% landing success rate and Falcon Heavy has a 100% mission success rate.
Which people?
What? These two do two separate things, do you mean ULA?
hope the best for them
However, they want to do NASA work which is very R&D focused and has great opportunities for innovation, plenty of low TRL work, and a bro ad variety of missions.
Industry isn’t doing that much low TRL work
It's really sad how our NASA funding is the lowest it's been since 1961.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-2026-budget-proposal...
I'm so sick of the not only incompetent leadership in the U.S., but the literal anti-science stance our government has taken. We're 6 months into this nightmare, I really can't see how it can get worse.
Please, don't jinx us
I hope they did the math. The DRP is not a severance, and if they were laid off, they'd have been caught in a RIF and should have received an actual severance.
If there's a RIF, they get a severance of 1 week per year for the first 10 years of work, 2 weeks per year above that, and a bonus percent if over 40. It maxes at 52 weeks pay. If you have 18 years (at least 26 weeks of severance, more if over 40) with the fed, waiting for the RIF was always better than taking DRP unless you were going to retire or quit anyways. Under that, the choice should have been "Will a RIF happen before 30 September - my severance?". If you will get a 4 week severance, then will you get RIF'd before 2 September? If you think the answer is yes, taking the DRP makes sense, if no then the DRP costs you money. The only benefit to taking DRP if you're not going to get RIF'd is if you believe you can get another job before 30 September.
After 30 September, if they haven't found a new job they won't qualify for UEI since they voluntarily separated (true in most states, there may be some that would give them UEI but I've not heard of one that gives people unemployment for quitting).
Legally, they also have to ask NASA for approval for any second jobs until 30 September. If they don't and take an industry job (say with SpaceX), I wouldn't put it past this administration to fuck with them. The penalties are mostly administrative, but some ethics law violations can involve some steep penalties and prison time.
the only working part of cape canaveral was whatever spy satellites they needed to launch.
thankfully spaceX does a pretty good job and while I wish it was still nasa leading the globe in space travel, the main decline of our era is unwieldy bureaucracy and not even nasa could figure out how to run a profit despite a monopoly.
You seem to be unaware that NASA does run a profit, and that SpaceX wouldn’t have been possible without NASA’s research and money. NASA has invested tens of billions in SpaceX.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-versus-spacex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Economic_impact...
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3721375-how-much-does...
I don't think it's correct to blame the NASA, the agency, for management decisions made by their overseer!
*(Imagine what SpaceX would look like if Starbase were split into 50 pieces in 50 states—nosecones from Alaska, winglets from Senator Shelby's district in Alabama... Imagine, if their senior executive wasn't breathing down everyone's necks to build things faster, but instead prioritized employee headcount as his objective function (maximizing–not minimizing). The way Congressional lawmakers run their pet projects is quite ridiculous).
[0] https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/07/05/republican-backed-reco... ("Republican-backed reconciliation bill passes, includes funding for ISS, Artemis programs, Space Shuttle relocation")
> "The legislation earmarks $9.995 billion to be available until Sept. 30, 2032, for projects that have backing by politicians in states that have held key roles in NASA’s Artemis program."
> "The biggest chunk of that is $4.1 billion set aside “for the procurement, transportation, integration, operation and other necessary expenses of the Space Launch System for Artemis Mission 4 and 5.” The bill states that no less than $1.025 billion should be spent on the heavy lift rocket each year FY26-FY29."
> "It also includes $20 million to fund the Orion spacecraft “for use with the Space Launch System on the Artemis 4 Mission and reuse in subsequent Artemis Missions.”"
> "These two items run counter to the proposed NASA budget from the White House, which sought to end the SLS and Orion programs following the launch of the Artemis III mission."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding_2
I think the thinking that government body is not for profit is misleading since you want a bit of independence in terms on financial budget
see what happen when government change stance, NASA hiring and firing depends on political mood at the point
having an profitable business wouldn't make NASA cut the job if government decide to cut the budget
There is no sense in trying to treat the government like a business.
china literally doing an opposite, they force buy company shares that turns that into "half" state company
I know china is bad and I agree with you but controlling business and billionaire is one they good at
if I get to choose where my money goes, I rather let the money goes to government budget than billionaire pocket
keeping taxes low because government not heavily dependant on TAX while keeping goverment body effecient and profitable
The issue is now trust in your funding. Say in a few years NASA suddenly had money to rehire, who would trust that enough to orient your life around it?
Do we survive this? Are you sure? Because this is just the first six months, imagine by summer 2028 what things are going to be like with every single thing defunded, homeless and car-living exploding, etc.
So, uh, the camps will be funded and there will no longer be homeless... Man, sure glad the libs got owned.
There were so many options to improve efficiency with technology and then simply not refilling some of the jobs (apparently there's a 5-6% yearly attrition in government jobs anyway.) But nooo... And obviously this was never what this was about.
A friend of mine worked for the White House under the Obama administration, with the first goal to digitize the VAs information. One of the Trump's first actions in 2016 was to end that. Shameful.
I just don't understand why this is something people would want.
The image is that for every scientist at Nasa there are countless administrators, HR ladies and diversity hires
Unless we get economic progress more equally spread this will get worse and worse.
Inequality, as measured by GINI has been falling both for the EU as a whole and within most European countries for decades now. The last decade in particular has seen declines in nearly all EU countries.
Taking the EU on average the last time it increased was in 2014 - which is to be expected as the 2013 expansion allowed a number of relatively poor countries into the union.
For individual countries, you can check the statistics here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI
A few examples, I looked at Ireland in particular, and inequality has never been lower - the earliest statistics I could find is from the mid-1980s. Inequality peaked around 2000 for the UK and has declined hugely since then. France is more equal than it was in 2000 although the fall is less dramatic than that for the UK. Admittedly Germany has seen a slight rise since 2000 but Germany has also absorbed millions of very poor refugees in that time.
The US is an outlier globally - with rising inequality over the last few decades.
Slightly off-topic, this untrue claim of rising inequality in Europe is often presented without challenge and then used to justify some radical political solution. To my mind, it's using the same political "mind hack" that the the MAGA/alt-right in the USA have used (in this case concerning race, immigrants, global multilateralism, or social tolerance - "wokism" - in general).
For both, the veracity of the claims is apparently unimportant and uninteresting as long as the claim aligns with one's political orientation. The goal of these oft repeated untruths is to provoke indignation or anger - in order to drum up support for some radical political "solution".
Here is a German podcast on the high quality "Deutschlandfunk".
Headline: "Only the top four percent make it to the top in Germany."
> Despite political upheavals over the past 150 years, Germany's elites have remained the same. Sociologist Michael Hartmann criticizes the fact that only four percent of the population shapes the country. He calls for a quota of working-class children on executive boards.
Same with Germany's schools, my country has one of the worst records when it comes to mixing it up. Those who come from well-educated parents will become well-educated. Society is quite static.
Next, Germany puts the majority of the financial burden of financing the country on incomes from work. Income from capital, or much worse, inheritances, are not even considered, whenever the government needs to plug holes it's going to come from working income.
Also, the number of bad jobs, especially those where even many engineers don't work for the actual employer, but for companies that lend them out, has only risen decade by decade to absurd heights. Employers may claim that is to work around the strict labor laws, that they cannot just fire somebody they don't want, but that is an incomplete statement at best. The entire economy has gone away from stable long-term, even life jobs, to ever more insecure employment. That is part of why our birth-rate has just dropped to new record lows too, there is just too little security and too much uncertainty in one's live these days.
We are also terrible at providing housing, which also depresses the labor market because moving has become risky and costly, there just is no housing no matter where you go, and if you find something it's likely to be much more expensive than what you had.
I forgot the actual URL! It's German though. And a podcast (19. July 2025, 29 minutes) But it's good and quite thorough and has a lot of details, so if you understand German, it is worth a listen.
They say the "elite" is about 4,000 people in Germany, defined as those having significant and real influence in politics, law, media (highly concentrated ownership), business.
https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/eliten-seit-dem-kaiserr...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QIEN628BIS
Irish property prices are and have risen considerably - but "600%", I think, is a somewhat dramatic way to present the increases - on an average yearly basis, it's been about 3.5% per year for the last 2 or 3 decades. To put this into perspective, average household incomes have been rising at a rate closer to 9% (non-inflation adjusted) per year - see https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ireland/annual-househo...
Looking at the CEIC data you linked, which is not inflation-adjusted, it shows household income increasing from just under $20k in 2003 to around $40k in 2023. Plugging that into the CAGR formula you get a 3.5% nominal annual return.
So house prices have increased at over 6.5% annually after inflation, while household incomes have increased at 3.5% before inflation.
And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble:
> The Gini coefficient fell from 0.78 in Q2 2013 to 0.70 as of Q4 2020, before declining sharply since 2021 (Chart 3). This steeper decline in 2021 is driven by increasing net wealth for the Bottom 50%, accounted for by a combination of a decline in this groups mortgage liabilities and, to a lesser extent, an upward appreciation in the value of housing assets. As a consequence, by Q1 2022 the Gini coefficient for Ireland stood at 0.68.
Your graph comes from BIS data - picking 1995 as starting point is a little unfair as that's exactly when house prices started to rise - if I measure from 1990, the rise (using BIS nominal nominal to make comparison easier) is 5.1% per annum.
But yes house prices have risen faster than household incomes. Like pretty much everywhere else in the world.
> And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble
The claim I was contesting was that wealth inequality had increased in the last few decades. It has not - it has decreased significantly.
But if you count household wealth in houses in Ireland, household wealth in Ireland in 1986 used to be 3 average Irish houses, and now it's 1/3rd. This was, just like anywhere else, deliberate government policy, amongst others to allow banks to invest in housing stock, preferential tax treatment and guarantees for property ownership, government buying of specific (mostly politician owned) housing, non-enforcement of both Irish and non-Irish tax law ... the list goes on.
Ireland prides itself on creating prosperity by lying and cheating other EU countries out of their tax income. Surprise! A government that lies on international treaties (they promised to enforce minimum tax since 2008, then ... didn't, then claimed credit for the "unseen in history prosperity boom"). Surprise! A government that does that ALSO lied to it's constituents and instead of delivering prosperity took 2/3rd of every euro you own.
"Oops, who could have seen this coming"
For example, Ireland's redistribution of income from rich to poor does more to reduce inequality than any other country in the OECD. The numbers are here: https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality-before-and-afte... or look at Figure 1 on page 10 here: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
And in figure 3, page 11 of the above report, Ireland has seen the 3rd highest growth in income redistribution in the OECD with redistribution from wealthy to poor growing by 40% in the space of a decade
So as far as I can see the facts indicate that Irish government policy is the exact opposite of what you claim.
I don't know why the rich in Ireland are somehow not on that graph, but when you walk around in Dublin for 10 minutes you see that this just isn't the real situation. It absolutely isn't the case that there aren't very rich people in Ireland and obviously they're not getting their wealth redistributed ...
There are no good outcomes until people stop voting for these grifters and con men.
Hell, it already has gotten worse in both France and Germany compared to the US. Imho Macron is more or less the same kind of politician as Trump (rich, and in it to make the rich richer), just a very different person (for one thing he's easily got 10x Trump's IQ, 10x Trump's looks, and doesn't look like an ancient golden retriever that got demummified for a presidential term). Obviously this guy failed to improve France's economic prospects, and every election cycle the actual Nazis, led by Le Pen, gain 5% extra of the vote. Germany differs a lot in the details, but something similar is happening.
The situation in (some parts of) Europe is like if you're hoping for 3rd Trump term, because Steve Bannon became a presidential candidate that polls over 50%. When Trump has just made immigration policy stricter in desperation, because even Trump realizes what a disaster that would be.
The con artists they vote for are plainly not going to help their interests (and often work against them), yet they reject understanding this and instead buy into simplistic emotional propaganda that validates their frustrations and absolves their responsibility. Then after some years go by when the mess has set in and Democrats have the nominal power, the Republican media machine goes to work highlighting everything they've broken and pinning it on the current administration. Rinse and repeat.
(context: I'm a libertarian and I have many criticisms of the Democrats as well, but at least they haven't been directly sabotaging the country for the past several decades, culminating in this)
The feel good explanations are just that - feel good euphemisms. Acting on them failed in the past repeatedly. Politicians who tried to improve situation of these people were punished, repeatedly. Meanwhile, politicians acting in offensive and harmful way were rewarding even when they made lifes of their voters worst.
We really should stop projecting these good faith falsehoods when the are and were clearly false.
All I know is that the 1990s until now have been a bonanza for some people but increasingly difficult for many others. I blame this on the financialization of our economy, with housing policy in America’s coastal metro areas definitely not helping (municipalities restrict supply through zoning and other mechanisms, and the financialization of our economy only exacerbated matters by pouring gasoline on the demand side). This is a failure of our leadership class; I’m not just talking about politicians, but I’m talking about our wealthy, our corporate executives, and even ourselves when we have positions of influence. Collectively the leadership of our country has chosen maximizing their own material benefit at the expense of maintaining a livable society. The result is anger due to Americans increasly having a harder time just getting by while our “leadership” keeps adding to their power and wealth.
Due to anger over establishment politicians, the Republican Party has been completely captured by MAGA, and the Democratic Party has a very vocal left wing that came close to winning the 2016 primary and was a serious contender in 2020.
Unfortunately Trump on a good day is far more destructive than Clinton, both Bushes, Obama, and Biden on their worst days. Trump’s neo-mercantilist economic policies won’t bring prosperity, but unfortunately his stance on “culture war” matters have resonated with large swaths of the American electorate; we’ve long had problems with racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and other related issues since the colonial era.
Moreover, despite Trump’s promises in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” Trump is backed by many prominent billionaires and other influential and powerful people. Trump is not a one-man operation; he would have no power without an entire apparatus of GOP politicians and a stacked Supreme Court.
The only thing keeping Trump’s popularity afloat is his relentless attacks on “enemies” of MAGA, such as immigrants, scientists, universities, unflattering media outlets, Democratic politicians, etc. But eventually the fallout of his reckless policies will trickle down to Trump voters in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and either when Trump runs out of enemies or when the MAGA base gets crushed by the weight of high prices and are looking for answers, what are Trump and MAGA politicians going to do?
Unfortunately I don’t see any easy solutions. A return to the pre-2017 status quo ante is only going to lead to the same leadership that led to such anger in the first place. However, staying the course is definitely going to lead to a crash. The solution is going to need to come from the people, but it’s hard for average people in America to compete against systems that entrench the power of our two-party system and that require massive amounts of money to effectively compete. There are no easy ways out of this mess.
If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Sadly those who didn't believe didn't vote enough.
Is it a matter of "belief," or could it possibly be an optimal strategy to secure potentially two more Supreme Court nominations?
If I come here and tell you that I'm going to reduce expenses and debt while reducing taxes and also investing massive amounts of money to improve the military, healthcare, etc, something should go off in your head because it doesn't add up.
Voting for someone promising unrealistic things is no different from going into a dark alley in what you know is a rough neighborhood. A victim is still a victim, but grown ups must own up to their actions... and there's no other way of saying this: what you did was fucking dumb. It's even dumber if you do the same dumb thing twice.
Trump should have been a much simpler problem. Those who want to be stupid badly can't be helped.
Unfortunately, consequences wont go only to people who voted for Trump, they will harm quite a lot of innocent people.
How exactly is Trump reducing the deficit by any significant margin?
Not to mention - tariffs are essentially an inflation tax on _every_single_purchase_.
1. Only Israel ($3,400) spends more per capita on R&D than the U.S. ($2,800) on R&D
2. The U.S. spent around $900 billion on R&D, with China estimated at $800 billion and the EU at $381 billion.
3. The per capita spending for other major economies:
- EU $850 per person - China around $700 per person (estimated) - South Korea $2,800 per person - Japan $1600 per person
(all roughly PPP adjusted)
Please check my estimates.
The point is that the U.S. spends a lot on R&D, so a haircut may not be bad for the health of U.S. R&D programs (new priorities) let alone the temporary reduction in expenses. The R&D output is still going to be enormous relative to the rest of the world and probably on par with China.
Only a devils advocate would believe that with this administration still giving his companies massive government contracts [1] and regulation win falls [2]
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grok-elon-musk-xai-pentagon-con...
[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-musk-spacex-rocket-...
Jared Isaacman is out, and what we're seeing actually happen now is the opposite of that. All the pork barrels are getting funded, and the brunt of budget cuts seems to be stated to be born by science missions like Roman Space Telescope.
I have read third party commentary on the SLS/Orion stuff that agrees. And actually, IIRC, Gateway requires multiple launches contracted out to Boeing and SpaceX, so this would be cutting off musks nose a little.
The rhetoric around cost cutting is something I can’t figure out how to deal with. The media makes it sound like the sky is falling with every cut. But having worked in enormous organizations myself, I also know that teams can and do lose headcount all the time, and somehow manage to carry on.
I guess the issue I wrestle with the most is how we can spend tax dollars on programs, but also have the ability to reduce those programs when needed, without it seeming like the end of the world.
We can’t have government agencies and programs that go on forever, expanding, growing in headcount and budget, for eternity. But the rhetoric around these events would have you believe that is the only path forward.
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
They are in demand and moving will get them higher pay and a more stable life.
USAID was probably a stronghold of Dem voters, but what about the Dept. of Agriculture, or the Forest Service?
But what bothers me is that hypocrisy accusation avoids making a claim about what would actually be a good or bad policy.
Do you want federal cut backs or not?
The right-leaning people caught up in this would probably say "Yes, but not in my obviously highly efficient division."
> SpaceX and friends don’t do scientific research.
They do though. That's the premise of xAI and even on their website is that they have all this 'research' and are feeding it to that 'grok' to establish even more scientific 'discoveries'
I use quotes because I value the human side of things and like to enjoy the excitement and joy of collaboration and people coming up with new stuff.
> the crown jewels of America’s last century
Including Nasa in this pure idealization of the past. Nasa had many flaws that enabled a catastrophic Shuttle program and then the slow loss of US go-to-LEO capability.
There's probably more to expect of US investment in space without incompetent or contradictory military and political oversight than the current nasa zombie programs.
And it's unclear that Nasa can ever be without that oversight.
Do you remember when a Republican presidential nominee defended his opponent from a racist question at a Republican Rally, calling him a "decent family man?"
--
Then, can you think of a time when a POTUS committed a pump a security he was selling, only to dump it immediately after his inauguration, and it it was barely talked about at at all?
To understand America do not listen to what they say but watch what they do...
Kind of fits the current administration's strategy.
Think of it like trying to understand the true origins and nature of the Soviet Union while being in the Soviet Union. Only a few people will even be able to achieve such an understanding and only under immense pressures and significant dangers even without speaking out, just alone for having sought out the truth. You cannot understand the Matrix while being plugged into it.
Or for most people to absorb.
Similarly we could use random phrase associations like:
The episode with golden rain -> facebook manipulation done by private office in St. P. -> elected
It sounds non-factual until you know the story, then you see its extrapolation.
And he fired the people that did their job at the FBI to investigate him. Out of pure retaliation.
It's ironic that you'd blame them for the thing they didnt want to do.
If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve been building reusable rockets like the ones elon is building now, except in like, 1980.
> it's unclear that Nasa can ever be without that (military and political) oversight
By design, Nasa is probably doomed to get interference.
> If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve been building reusable rockets
Pure fantasy. Nasa's interest for reusable vehicles led them to the Shuttle. Even without all the design changes, it would have been a dud.
Due to its nature, Nasa can't freely explore and commit to a design like SpaceX does/did. It draws a concept and freezes it after contractor review, only to find after an already massive investment if it works. Then there's public accountability instead of executive risk taking.
I'd bet the proper way to have protected Nasa would have been to keep it focused on key scientific missions with limited financial exposure. Mars rovers are a perfect case, or most James Webb.
Using Nasa to go back to the Moon or reach Mars was doomed to fail (sort of like it failed post Apollo).
The shuttle was a result of budget cuts they had no control over, military pressure they had no control over AND an interest in reusable spacecraft. The latter wasnt the problem.
The way I see it you are either blaming the organization for something it had no control over or are making an incoherent point in order to disparage the organization. Perhaps you could illuminate a 3rd interpretation of your comment.
The tech industry certainly has its flaws and things to criticize, but this doesn’t seem part of it, unless I’m missing a connection somehow.
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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562399
Imagine becoming wealthy and powerful in an age of abundance off of NCSA Mosaic and throwing it all away because you feel threatened by black people and think that government funded research is now bad. That's the level of "advanced thought" in these guys' group chats.
Technology made all of this possible. From amazon (destruction of local shops) to uber (not saying the old system was good, but who needs transit concentrated into the hands of a few) to google (monopolizing and stifling search and adtech). And who knows what role large scale manipulation by stochastic propaganda parrots will play.
Or Social networks as an easy way of spreading misinformation.
New to the club AI that delivers convincing sound, photo and video „proofs“ for any fake news they want including elaborated texts fitting to their target audience
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- Randy Marsh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_emigration
Which one? *blank stare*
America has a deeply rooted problem with a parasitic and evil, lying, conniving, devious ruling class and their treasonous, accomplice enablers… to clarify what may be dismissed by some because you call them “crackheads”.
What do you do when/if you have everything else, you have done everything else, and normal things everyone else does bore you and you essentially have unlimited money/resources; you do things that most people cannot even imagine anyone would think of doing, let alone do them. It is why certain elements of our society have worked so hard to corrupt society in all kinds of ways, including through desensitization through all kinds of media and even things like essentially taking capital punishment off the table, even for the ver people who it is most effective for, deliberate, intentional "white collar" criminals like the very kinds that do perverse things. You can't pardon perverts and con artists and traitors if they are dead.
Which one?
If you want to blame anyone, try the financial sector and financialization of everything. They fed the conflagration and created perfect condition for Trump-like figure to rise.
Shit education leads to pliable humans leads to social manipulation leads to desired outcomes from marketing efforts.
I know they all one to blame even they control government
At the end of the day it's what capitalism is best at maximizing efficiency, and externalizing the risks to someone else.
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.
Google and Microsoft and Uber were paying both parties, that part is right.
And, on the topic of "extravagant luxury" - nobody is saving any money. Do you think you're gonna get a check in the mail with the "savings" we get from cutting NASA? Come on.
The reality is that we're cutting everything and our debt is skyrocketing. We're not saving anything, we're actually losing money at a more rapid pace. You're being robbed by republican fiscal policy.
It's a lose-lose. Maybe maaaaaaaaybe, if we were REALLY saving a TON of money these cuts could be justifiable. But, we're not. We're saving -2 Trillion dollars. Baby that's your tax money.
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 votes, as politicians obviously try to maintain their voter base as a consideration in their decisions.
Note historically a criticism of the original lunar mission was that USA diverted funds from hospitals and other public programs to fund the mission. So some were bitter despite the triumph.
It goes back to the fundamental conundrum. You have a back of corn. Do you plant the corn, or eat the corn? If AI delivers for America (planting the corn) and USA lands on Mars, these 4k NASA employees will not dwell in the public imagination despite our respect for their commitment, skill and service.
Last time, USA was behind in space race and they didn’t just use what they already had to go to the moon, instead they started a huge movement that inspired and educated generations of scientist and engineers. this redeemed all the issues with cutting services from other places to go to the moon.
This time around, it looks like a desperate attempt to do something that worked in the past and looks impressive on face value, but it’s actually empty inside.
Last time, huge number of people were provided with resources and education that had outstanding impact on America, much much more than the act of landing on the moon did by itself.
This time you get resources directed to a generation of hateful people and sex offenders who use the already available technology to produce a show.
With both the cuts to NASA and Musk leaving the core inner circle of Trump, space exploration is going to be set back. Mars ain’t happening in our lifetimes, IMO.
I hope I’m wrong.
If nothing else, he's aware that there's a bit more involved in getting humans to Mars on any timeline than just rockets, and slashing the budget of the only entity working on those problems might not speed up getting there...
If course, he also knows enough to know nobody's sending manned missions to Mars in the next launch window regardless of whose in charge, and he's been quite fond of breaking stuff recently so I'm not sure we want Elon in charge either.
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.
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.
Such as?
The idea that the Trump administration could put a man on mars before the end of their term, even if this was a very top priority is ludicrous.
> "This mirrors the political, prestige, and technology triumph of the Kennedy administration"
Trump may have said "before my term ends"; what JFK said was "before this decade is out".
IMHO, this is like a diametric opposite of Richard M. Nixon landing on the moon, two presidencies after Kennedy (and of opposite party); acting for Americans' obvious shared interests (not personal vanity); being the final link in an unbroken chain of sustained, stable governance. We've lost the capacity for greatness of that era. We don't have that, that chain of stable governance in service of national interests; what we have is an attention-deficient narcissist, capriciously destroying every great American thing that exists which doesn't have name attached.
(Ironically, the thing Kennedy so fervently competed against no longer exists today. That fearsome adversary, the triumph of Sputnik and Gagarin, was also demolished in this century by a Trump-like figure, spouting vapid promises of greatness as he vandaled and looted it to the ground).
Can't pinpoint who you are referring to. Gemini thinks Yeltsin? But neither it nor I remember any "greatness" promises from the guy.
Here's a generic example of the flavor of Russia's non-credible space propaganda—stuff their government says, like Trump, that's an enormous lie, that everyone knows is a lie:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120204103104/http://english.pr... (Pravda: "Russia to send cosmonauts to the Moon this decade" (2012))
As a nation we need to figure out how you, probably a person who considers yourself a functioning adult member of society, came to believe and even repeat this.
This will literally not happen and anyone who thinks it will needs to seek professional help.
https://qz.com/emails/space-business/2172377/an-oxford-case-...
NASA does a lot more than space launches, and they do use private sector (including SpaceX) for most of their launches.
I couldn't find a comparison of the number of launch failures between the two, my recollection is that this happened a lot more often in SpaceX rockets. But maybe that's included in the cost overrun figures and still puts SpaceX ahead by an order of magnitude.
I agree with the thesis of the paper, that platforms and incremental advances are more efficient and more economical. I don't quite agree that an incremental approach would have worked well for the NASA efforts in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps it should be considered as an option for these large organizations, but I'm not convinced it's always better.
Also, to do this study fairly, you would have to set up SpaceX to not benefit from any of the advances made by NASA for the decades beforehand. Some step-function style advances did happen under NASA supervision that benefitted the entire scientific community.
Also, if you're doing a fair comparison between public and private sector you've got to consider all the launch startups that aren't SpaceX, including the ones that haven't successfully launched...
How is that working out with the US Health Care System?
Great system...
In both cases, I don't think the system works well without assuming spherical cows or something like that.
Edit: ah, I see it's "hurtling." Although I guess in both cases you have to dodge larger and larger geographic regions to claim success, so a bit like hurdling. :)