Posted on 02/19/2025 11:35:03 AM PST by V_TWIN
This week, reports broke that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived at NASA to downsize the agency.
According to ABC News, NASA has laid off 10 percent of its workforce as a result. ABC News cited unnamed sources at the agency about this.
"NASA is complying with the guidance and direction provided by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)," sources at NASA told ABC News in a statement. "It's premature to discuss the impact to our agency, at this time."
Newsweek added that these layoffs impact probationary employees and those accepting buyouts.
The agency’s current administrator, Janet Petro, confirmed to employees that DOGE had arrived this week.
“DOGE Presence: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has arrived onsite at the agency. We anticipate that they will start reviewing our contracts to find efficiencies,” Petro stated in the Feb. 14, email that was obtained by Spectrum News.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
When I was at the Cape in 2000, I saw a bunch of old men giving tours and dreaming of the 60’s.
I saw that launch tower and Orion capsule and were promised this was man’s return to the moon.
LOTS of BS.
WAY past time to close NASA Ames in Mountain View.
‘NASA is welfare for smart people.’
Orion has become the classic “moving the goalposts” project.
Every year they add a year to the completion date.
I am not amused.
Implying that they did happen is extremely dishonest.
Quit lying, Jan.
let SpaceX take us there.
Oh ... have you finally got through your thick skull that the Van Allen radiation belts aren't an impediment travel beyond Earth orbit?
Obama cut back on NASA in Houston. I bet the media did not complain then.
Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world
By Byron York
July 4, 2010
“In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.”
If NASA was the premiere space agency, then they would not be having their lunch eaten every day by Space X and others on the non gov side.
Nasa is a massive bloated Gov entity.
Innovation, cutting edge and results seem to have gone out the window.
If we can shield our our astronauts, great. Until that day we will NEVER leave LEO
NASA tries to do too much.
NASA, and its predecessor, were created to keep the US from falling behind a then Soviet threat, both technical and existential (nuclear delivery system development). It had a mission then, and it wasnt expected to be efficient, any more than the military is expected to be efficient. It’s job was to get it done, and the cost was expected to be high.
NASA still, post USSR, is expected to maintain that technical lead in the world. Again, efficiency isnt the driver when you have to have a better system than the Chinese or the Russians. And some of the tech has no commercial driver so you cant get the efficiencies achieved by commercial applications that have a high demand.
So I give them some slack in that for these things, they cant be ‘competitive’, especially if they are building ‘never been done before’ stuff.
What they need to get out of is the stuff where there is a commercial demand and efficiency of numbers by commercial producers cant be beat.
Launch vehicles seems to be a glaring example today. Unless NASA has a case that no one else can build their heavy launcher to support manned return to the moon or mars missions, then they should not be in the launch business.
But if you need to know the chemical composition of Uranus (sorry, could help myself), then the only way you get that sort of thing is by an expensive sensor (probe, sorry again) on an expensive interplanetary satellite that you wont find in a Starlink factory.
But to your point about mission, ALL government agencies should have a mission that in someway supports the security of the US and is a good use of tax payer dollars. i.e. Dept of Education, if we still have one, should mostly be looking at what our work force needs to lead the world in the relevant fields, and only funding research that will help build that work force. Not just doling out money to universities for no good reason.
What NASA has in common with every government agency—is leftist poison pills everywhere you look.
That makes everything much more expensive and much less efficient.
It has to be audited with fanatical scrutiny—and then let us see what remains.
(My guess—less than half the staff and budget.)
“NASA lost their was after the Space Shuttle program ended ...”
The Space Shuttle WAS NASA losing its way. After the cancellation of the remaining three Apollo missions, NASA became just another Federal agency trying to ensure its annual Congressional Appropriation. To ensure maximum broad-based support, the Shuttle was supposed to be everything to everyone. Meaning it didn’t do anything particularly well. It sure never hit the launch rate it was supposed to.
Been there, done that. In 1969.
Maybe Obama figured all of the heavy lifting was done, we conquered outer space at that point, and now he could contaminate it with outreach programs and affirmative action hires.
Still no word from the DoD.
I take that back:
You do realize that SpaceX is a NASA contractor, right? That Dragon was built for NASA? That Falcon 9/Heavy was built, in part, FOR NASA?
Now ... do your homework: Who built the Atlas rocket and the Mercury spacecraft? Who built the Titan rocket and the Gemini spacecraft? Who built the Space Shuttle system? Who built the Saturn family of rockets and the Apollo spacecraft? Who built the Delta family of rockets? Who built the Atlas family of rockets? What do the answers to those questions all have in common?
Nasa is a massive bloated Gov entity.
True.
Innovation, cutting edge and results seem to have gone out the window.
Yeah ... in 1972 ... when America decided that allowing democRATs to buy votes from the indolent using taxpayer money was more important than space exploration.
“Still no word from the DoD”
I was at the DoD for over 30 years......I know people that WANT to take the early retirement offer but can’t because that particular branch supports the Navy warfighter and can’t afford to delete positions permanently.
works for me.
I think SpaceX has won that argument hands-down. The NASA approach of trying to anticipate every possible failure during the design phase, and then design them out of the final design, has only led to looooooooong development timelines, massive costs, and frequently to failed products because no one can adequately anticipate every way in which a highly complex system can fail.
SpaceX, on the other hand, has taken the approach of creating a reasonable design and then just test flying the heck out of it, which causes frequent failures at first, and iteratively fixing what breaks, flying again, fixing again, evolving the design, etc. until the ship eventually becomes reliable enough to depend upon to carry humans or cargo. AND, they’ve done this while simultaneously attempting (and succeeding spectacularly) to do things no one thought possible, such as propulsive booster landings, recovering fairings, catching skyscraper-sized boosters, etc.
In contrast to NASA’s and the ULA’s exorbitantly-priced and ridiculously delayed failures, SpaceX’s approach has slashed both development and operational costs dramatically, while producing inarguably the safest and most reliable rocket ever developed in the form of Falcon 9. Same goes for the Dragon capsule as well.
At this point, SpaceX IS the U.S. space program, and NASA is just an anachronism of doubtful utility. But Blue Origin you say?…Lol, that’s nothing more than a Jeff Bezos vanity project that is about as inept as NASA and the ULA.
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