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"One major reason: JPL is hemorrhaging talent to private space companies. They can’t pay engineers enough to keep them, nor entice new hires. It’s difficult to

"One major reason: JPL is hemorrhaging talent to private space companies. They can’t pay engineers enough to keep them, nor entice new hires. It’s difficult to overstate how much of a problem this is. The Psyche project literally didn’t have a chief engineer."

alsodumb 4y ago
And yet every passionate international PhD student I know who really wanted to contribute to JPL's mission can't because of ITAR restrictions. I wish there was an easy way to find middle ground where international students undergo screening and background check but get to contribute to missions of national importance.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  I've thought about that, and the best thing I can think of is to do a background check and give them citizenship (for exceptional applicants). It's a tough problem, given how slowly this moves along.
  - waste_monk 4y ago
    That's not always a workaround for ITAR. If you're from a 5EYES or otherwise friendly country you can probably sign a TAA and get involved, but dual citizenship or otherwise holding strong ties (e.g. country of birth) to an "ITAR naughty list" (China, NK, Russia, Iran, etc.) country is enough to permanently render you ineligible to work with ITAR. E.g. someone who was born in China, became a citizen of the USA, and renounced their Chinese citizenship would still never be allowed to work on ITAR. This is to prevent cases such as they steal some ITAR controlled info or materiel and flee back to China (and get their Chinese citizenship back as part of whatever espionage deal occurred). Unfortunate for those who are truly passionate and have no malicious intent, but security comes first.
WWLink 4y ago
Even the private space companies don't pay that much. Like, if you can write software, you can make significantly more at a tech company.
tunap 4y ago
This soon may change, as Aerospace SPACs have been unable to create profit. The latest quarterly earnings have reported losses across the board. SpaceX may be an outlier(IDK if they are profitable or the role Gov subsidies make), but for the rest, balance sheets are all bleeding red. As they have for over a decade. Parabolic arc site is 1001 right now, best I found was a dated WSJ article that precedes significant current reports & events: https://archive.ph/Jgo9F https://archive.ph/Jgo9F edit:remove3d naive opinion.
- alsodumb 4y ago
  I think people should stop calling government contracts as government subsidies - it is misleading on so many levels. Did SpaceX get money from NASA during Falcon development? Yes! But so did Boeing, ULA, Lockheed Martin on tons of projects. Did NASA save a ton more money compared to their investment in SpaceX thanks to cheaper launch costs? Also YES! Not just NASA, every government body that needed launch services (including DoD, NOAA, NRO) saved money with SpaceX compared to ULA launches.
  - tunap 4y ago
    Fair enough. I believe SpaceX is the outlier in that space, regardless. Pun intended. Parabolicarc is now back online w/ a new site overhaul. This is the particular article that I was referring to: http://parabolicarc.wpengine.com/2022/10/26/space-spacs-the-reckoning/ http://parabolicarc.wpengine.com/2022/10/26/space-spacs-the-...

alsodumb 4y ago

And yet every passionate international PhD student I know who really wanted to contribute to JPL's mission can't because of ITAR restrictions. I wish there was an easy way to find middle ground where international students undergo screening and background check but get to contribute to missions of national importance.

rsj_hn 4y ago
I've thought about that, and the best thing I can think of is to do a background check and give them citizenship (for exceptional applicants). It's a tough problem, given how slowly this moves along.
- waste_monk 4y ago
  That's not always a workaround for ITAR. If you're from a 5EYES or otherwise friendly country you can probably sign a TAA and get involved, but dual citizenship or otherwise holding strong ties (e.g. country of birth) to an "ITAR naughty list" (China, NK, Russia, Iran, etc.) country is enough to permanently render you ineligible to work with ITAR. E.g. someone who was born in China, became a citizen of the USA, and renounced their Chinese citizenship would still never be allowed to work on ITAR. This is to prevent cases such as they steal some ITAR controlled info or materiel and flee back to China (and get their Chinese citizenship back as part of whatever espionage deal occurred). Unfortunate for those who are truly passionate and have no malicious intent, but security comes first.

WWLink 4y ago

Even the private space companies don't pay that much. Like, if you can write software, you can make significantly more at a tech company.

tunap 4y ago

This soon may change, as Aerospace SPACs have been unable to create profit. The latest quarterly earnings have reported losses across the board. SpaceX may be an outlier(IDK if they are profitable or the role Gov subsidies make), but for the rest, balance sheets are all bleeding red. As they have for over a decade. Parabolic arc site is 1001 right now, best I found was a dated WSJ article that precedes significant current reports & events: https://archive.ph/Jgo9F https://archive.ph/Jgo9F edit:remove3d naive opinion.

alsodumb 4y ago
I think people should stop calling government contracts as government subsidies - it is misleading on so many levels. Did SpaceX get money from NASA during Falcon development? Yes! But so did Boeing, ULA, Lockheed Martin on tons of projects. Did NASA save a ton more money compared to their investment in SpaceX thanks to cheaper launch costs? Also YES! Not just NASA, every government body that needed launch services (including DoD, NOAA, NRO) saved money with SpaceX compared to ULA launches.
- tunap 4y ago
  Fair enough. I believe SpaceX is the outlier in that space, regardless. Pun intended. Parabolicarc is now back online w/ a new site overhaul. This is the particular article that I was referring to: http://parabolicarc.wpengine.com/2022/10/26/space-spacs-the-reckoning/ http://parabolicarc.wpengine.com/2022/10/26/space-spacs-the-...