6 ms·

Two things: - I like the rolling Moon animation very much. - This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during a budget squeeze, presumably with

Two things: - I like the rolling Moon animation very much. - This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during a budget squeeze, presumably with the hope that some of those they attract will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again. I guess it's also a neat kind of try-before-you-buy for both sides. NASA is prestigious and one of the very few places one could do purely science-focused aerospace engineering, but it's still a government job under all the gold leaf and atomic robots. EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.

porridgeraisin 6mo ago
Isn't most of the actual aerospace R&D work contracted out?
- jvanderbot 6mo ago
  No
  - porridgeraisin 6mo ago
    What kind of research happens outside academia-attached labs like JPL and outside MIC firms like lockheed/boeing?
    - OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
      There are a fair number of engineers at centers (Stennis, Ames, Kennedy, etc.) that are government employees. When I was NASA-adjacent, it seemed they wrote the specs and testing regimes. I think the government even did some of the testing with government-employed test engineers and technicians. But yeah, a lot of the manufacturing is done by contractors. There's a joke in the aero world that F-16s are designed by people Ph.D.'s, manufactured by people with Masters degrees, flown by people with a Batchelor's degree in History and maintained by people with a High School Diploma. It turns out you have to make jobs for people at all levels of education and experience.
      - porridgeraisin 6mo ago
        Makes sense. What about on the basic research side? Is that done mostly through academia grants or are there in-house folks in the centers?
        jvanderbot 6mo ago
        Each NASA center maintains in-house engineers and scientists, if for no other reason than to oversee and critique contracted work. But in reality they do significant amounts of directed research using "burden" funded research for their on internal needs, and grant work for NASA and other agencies (like DOE). I worked at JPL, and worked with folks at Ames for various reasons. Both centers try to carve out enough internal time to research new mission concepts, new ways of accomplishing existing mission concepts, or new basic technologies that have dual use for missions/commercial appliations. All of this would qualify as basic research similar to what would happen at Caltech or Stanford, the nearby official/unofficial partners. I attended all kinds of conferences and agency-level meetings with researchers from many other agencies / nasa centers as well, all mostly aimed at finding out how to better explore space (new missions), or improve our existing exploration capabilities, either with new or by adapting existing tech. NASA has an entire reporting pipeline called "New Technology Reports" that makes all of this research immediately public, and a deep tradition of spinning off commercial businesses to carry it forward if it turns out to be a good idea.
        porridgeraisin 6mo ago
        makes sense, thanks
    - robotresearcher 6mo ago
      Ingenuity (Mars helicopter) had researchers at Ames and Langley Research Centers, for example. Super cool IMHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)
tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago
[flagged]
- digitaltrees 6mo ago
  That’s not even remotely true and is a trite dismissal of legitimate criticism. Further, even though this might be an exciting concept, when put in the context of the massive budget cuts to nasa specifically it’s hard to fully celebrate what might be more a PR stunt than a meaningful commitment to science and exploration.
  - LorenDB 6mo ago
    I don't think Jared Isaacman is interested in PR stunts. He actually seems to care about the science and exploration parts of NASA. Actually, he seems to care about all of NASA.
    - ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
      Isaacman definitely did not pass up his golden opportunity on Pesach to light the most epic menorah the world has ever seen!
    - threetonesun 6mo ago
      The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality, although maybe that was less a PR stunt than the fact that NASA must (literally) shoot for the moon to stay politically relevant.
      - esseph 6mo ago
        > The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality While I can't comment on the cost per say, there are both military and capitalistic reasons for the race to the moon.
        bakies 6mo ago
sailfast 6mo ago
They had these kinds of programs for a long time, but many of the engineers were vilified and the programs disbanded as soon as this administration took office. I'm not sure why someone would sign up to work for a government that has no respect for its employees (or a company for that matter) if they already have gainful employment. In fact, a bunch of NASA labs were recently closed where folks with this exact skillset could do these exact jobs. Why re-post under a different skin and expect a different result?
- OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
  Well... the TSA was a jobs program for people who couldn't or didn't want to get jobs as cops. Stennis (Space Flight Center) is a jobs program for Aero Engineering grads to keep them from going to work in Europe or India. Who knows... we might need them to design newer expensive missile systems sometime. There are all these 30-60 year old engineers who look like they should be good hires on paper, but the tech economy has been pooping out bullshit products (and jobs) for the last 20 years. The last "real" job I had... my official role was to sit at a desk and "coordinate" development. While no one was looking, I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) My job at Amazon was similar... the higher up the food chain you went, the less management understood what engineers did (modulo a few notable exceptions -- the guy who ran Route 53 when it launched was amazingly tech saavy for a VP level manager.) There's only so much idiocy you can expect the tech industry to digest. It's time to send engineers to the government so they can write documents about how we should evaluate the requirements for evaluation criteria.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6mo ago
    > I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) ...usually it's the other way around. May I ask what the situation was? Reverse-outsourcing by the Indian central government?
    - jimmydddd 6mo ago
      Not OP. Sounds like he was considered to be a manager and wasn't allowed to get into the weeds. So instead of just managing the off shore team, he wrote some of the code for them and then let them take credit for it.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
chrisweekly 6mo ago
Thanks for your positive framing and pushback against (possibly knee-jerk) cynicism. Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to try it out, wish it supported iOS.
- echelon 6mo ago
  > Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to try it out, wish it supported iOS. I need this! I once tried building something like this but got busy. Manually curated lists with the addition of "information hygiene" agents will make the internet wholesome again.
thegrim33 6mo ago
>> budget squeeze >> will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again 2026 budget - 24.4 billion 2025 budget - 24.8 billion 2024 budget - 25.3 billion 2023 budget - 25.3 billion 2022 budget - 24.0 billion 2021 budget - 23.2 billion 2020 budget - 22.6 billion 2019 budget - 21.5 billion 2018 budget - 20.7 billion 2017 budget - 19.6 billion 2016 budget - 19.2 billion What part of these numbers are you interpreting as some sort of insane budget restriction?
- andrewstuart 6mo ago
  You’re kinda implying that there’s a few people standing around in a shed, and that really don’t cost too much.
- zamadatix 6mo ago
  24.4 in 2026 is less than 19.2 in 2016. I wouldn't call it a giant squeeze or anything though, but these raw numbers almost imply the opposite kind of misunderstanding.
- SiempreViernes 6mo ago
  The admin has tried two times in a row to cut the total budget by 20%, and the science budget by 50% So, probably that squeeze?
  - elictronic 6mo ago
    Congress sets the budget not the president. The administrations budget is aspirational, and if they want to force it they are required to use political savvy and whatever influence they have built up. Yeah so zero influence as all of that is towards cover ups, stock manipulation, and incompetence.
    - chaboud 6mo ago
      The executive has the veto and a willingness to leave the government non-functional (funny how anti-government types are often okay with kneecapping government). They're not powerless.
krapp 6mo ago
>EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on. Why bother? Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore, and the American government can't be trusted to fund it properly, or to not rewrite or defund research because of wrongthink or "DEI." If I were working for NASA, or even a possible candidate for working for NASA, I'd get my passport in order and look for greener pastures. Sure, the pay may not be the best but at least you aren't working for Nazis and pedophiles who believe in space demons and miasma theory. (oops I did a cynicism.)
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
  > (oops I did a cynicism.) That's not cynicism, that's... something else.
  - ratrace 6mo ago
    [dead]
- ninjagoo 6mo ago
  > Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore There's about a third that lean that way or atleast they don't care, and they have gained control of the government because of various factors, namely, part of the middle third disillusioned with economics (left behind) and wanting a change, another part of the middle third staying home because of geopolitics, and yet another part of the middle third falling prey to media biased by right-wing billionaire/corporatist capture. Any suggestions for a long-term fix for this problem?
  - hdndjsbbs 6mo ago
    When you frame it like that it sounds like some kind of vanguard of class-conscious people should try to rebel and establish a, I don't know, dictatorship of the proletariat? Maybe they could give themselves some kind of Russian name to sound cool.
    - 6mo ago
weare138 6mo ago
Still no idea what 'NASA Force' is but they do have a slick looking website.
rtaylorgarlock 6mo ago
REQUEST: coupon for positive thinking; STATUS: DENIED, NON-NEW USER NEW BETTER HAHAHA std::process::exit(sarcasm) seriously though, this is HN. I'm done complaining about it. I'd like to encourage different behavior, yet my experience has taught me the opposite: Be open to offering feedback in the case feedback is requested or required. In any other case, disengage.

porridgeraisin 6mo ago

Isn't most of the actual aerospace R&D work contracted out?

jvanderbot 6mo ago
No
- porridgeraisin 6mo ago
  What kind of research happens outside academia-attached labs like JPL and outside MIC firms like lockheed/boeing?
  - OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
    There are a fair number of engineers at centers (Stennis, Ames, Kennedy, etc.) that are government employees. When I was NASA-adjacent, it seemed they wrote the specs and testing regimes. I think the government even did some of the testing with government-employed test engineers and technicians. But yeah, a lot of the manufacturing is done by contractors. There's a joke in the aero world that F-16s are designed by people Ph.D.'s, manufactured by people with Masters degrees, flown by people with a Batchelor's degree in History and maintained by people with a High School Diploma. It turns out you have to make jobs for people at all levels of education and experience.
    - porridgeraisin 6mo ago
      Makes sense. What about on the basic research side? Is that done mostly through academia grants or are there in-house folks in the centers?
      - jvanderbot 6mo ago
        Each NASA center maintains in-house engineers and scientists, if for no other reason than to oversee and critique contracted work. But in reality they do significant amounts of directed research using "burden" funded research for their on internal needs, and grant work for NASA and other agencies (like DOE). I worked at JPL, and worked with folks at Ames for various reasons. Both centers try to carve out enough internal time to research new mission concepts, new ways of accomplishing existing mission concepts, or new basic technologies that have dual use for missions/commercial appliations. All of this would qualify as basic research similar to what would happen at Caltech or Stanford, the nearby official/unofficial partners. I attended all kinds of conferences and agency-level meetings with researchers from many other agencies / nasa centers as well, all mostly aimed at finding out how to better explore space (new missions), or improve our existing exploration capabilities, either with new or by adapting existing tech. NASA has an entire reporting pipeline called "New Technology Reports" that makes all of this research immediately public, and a deep tradition of spinning off commercial businesses to carry it forward if it turns out to be a good idea.
        porridgeraisin 6mo ago
        makes sense, thanks
  - robotresearcher 6mo ago
    Ingenuity (Mars helicopter) had researchers at Ames and Langley Research Centers, for example. Super cool IMHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago

[flagged]

digitaltrees 6mo ago
That’s not even remotely true and is a trite dismissal of legitimate criticism. Further, even though this might be an exciting concept, when put in the context of the massive budget cuts to nasa specifically it’s hard to fully celebrate what might be more a PR stunt than a meaningful commitment to science and exploration.
- LorenDB 6mo ago
  I don't think Jared Isaacman is interested in PR stunts. He actually seems to care about the science and exploration parts of NASA. Actually, he seems to care about all of NASA.
  - ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
    Isaacman definitely did not pass up his golden opportunity on Pesach to light the most epic menorah the world has ever seen!
  - threetonesun 6mo ago
    The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality, although maybe that was less a PR stunt than the fact that NASA must (literally) shoot for the moon to stay politically relevant.
    - esseph 6mo ago
      > The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality While I can't comment on the cost per say, there are both military and capitalistic reasons for the race to the moon.
      - bakies 6mo ago

sailfast 6mo ago

They had these kinds of programs for a long time, but many of the engineers were vilified and the programs disbanded as soon as this administration took office. I'm not sure why someone would sign up to work for a government that has no respect for its employees (or a company for that matter) if they already have gainful employment. In fact, a bunch of NASA labs were recently closed where folks with this exact skillset could do these exact jobs. Why re-post under a different skin and expect a different result?

OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
Well... the TSA was a jobs program for people who couldn't or didn't want to get jobs as cops. Stennis (Space Flight Center) is a jobs program for Aero Engineering grads to keep them from going to work in Europe or India. Who knows... we might need them to design newer expensive missile systems sometime. There are all these 30-60 year old engineers who look like they should be good hires on paper, but the tech economy has been pooping out bullshit products (and jobs) for the last 20 years. The last "real" job I had... my official role was to sit at a desk and "coordinate" development. While no one was looking, I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) My job at Amazon was similar... the higher up the food chain you went, the less management understood what engineers did (modulo a few notable exceptions -- the guy who ran Route 53 when it launched was amazingly tech saavy for a VP level manager.) There's only so much idiocy you can expect the tech industry to digest. It's time to send engineers to the government so they can write documents about how we should evaluate the requirements for evaluation criteria.
- DaiPlusPlus 6mo ago
  > I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) ...usually it's the other way around. May I ask what the situation was? Reverse-outsourcing by the Indian central government?
  - jimmydddd 6mo ago
    Not OP. Sounds like he was considered to be a manager and wasn't allowed to get into the weeds. So instead of just managing the off shore team, he wrote some of the code for them and then let them take credit for it.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

chrisweekly 6mo ago

Thanks for your positive framing and pushback against (possibly knee-jerk) cynicism. Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to try it out, wish it supported iOS.

echelon 6mo ago
> Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to try it out, wish it supported iOS. I need this! I once tried building something like this but got busy. Manually curated lists with the addition of "information hygiene" agents will make the internet wholesome again.

thegrim33 6mo ago

>> budget squeeze >> will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again 2026 budget - 24.4 billion 2025 budget - 24.8 billion 2024 budget - 25.3 billion 2023 budget - 25.3 billion 2022 budget - 24.0 billion 2021 budget - 23.2 billion 2020 budget - 22.6 billion 2019 budget - 21.5 billion 2018 budget - 20.7 billion 2017 budget - 19.6 billion 2016 budget - 19.2 billion What part of these numbers are you interpreting as some sort of insane budget restriction?

andrewstuart 6mo ago
You’re kinda implying that there’s a few people standing around in a shed, and that really don’t cost too much.
zamadatix 6mo ago
24.4 in 2026 is less than 19.2 in 2016. I wouldn't call it a giant squeeze or anything though, but these raw numbers almost imply the opposite kind of misunderstanding.
SiempreViernes 6mo ago
The admin has tried two times in a row to cut the total budget by 20%, and the science budget by 50% So, probably that squeeze?
- elictronic 6mo ago
  Congress sets the budget not the president. The administrations budget is aspirational, and if they want to force it they are required to use political savvy and whatever influence they have built up. Yeah so zero influence as all of that is towards cover ups, stock manipulation, and incompetence.
  - chaboud 6mo ago
    The executive has the veto and a willingness to leave the government non-functional (funny how anti-government types are often okay with kneecapping government). They're not powerless.

krapp 6mo ago

>EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on. Why bother? Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore, and the American government can't be trusted to fund it properly, or to not rewrite or defund research because of wrongthink or "DEI." If I were working for NASA, or even a possible candidate for working for NASA, I'd get my passport in order and look for greener pastures. Sure, the pay may not be the best but at least you aren't working for Nazis and pedophiles who believe in space demons and miasma theory. (oops I did a cynicism.)

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
> (oops I did a cynicism.) That's not cynicism, that's... something else.
- ratrace 6mo ago
  [dead]
ninjagoo 6mo ago
> Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore There's about a third that lean that way or atleast they don't care, and they have gained control of the government because of various factors, namely, part of the middle third disillusioned with economics (left behind) and wanting a change, another part of the middle third staying home because of geopolitics, and yet another part of the middle third falling prey to media biased by right-wing billionaire/corporatist capture. Any suggestions for a long-term fix for this problem?
- hdndjsbbs 6mo ago
  When you frame it like that it sounds like some kind of vanguard of class-conscious people should try to rebel and establish a, I don't know, dictatorship of the proletariat? Maybe they could give themselves some kind of Russian name to sound cool.
  - 6mo ago

weare138 6mo ago

Still no idea what 'NASA Force' is but they do have a slick looking website.

rtaylorgarlock 6mo ago

REQUEST: coupon for positive thinking; STATUS: DENIED, NON-NEW USER NEW BETTER HAHAHA std::process::exit(sarcasm) seriously though, this is HN. I'm done complaining about it. I'd like to encourage different behavior, yet my experience has taught me the opposite: Be open to offering feedback in the case feedback is requested or required. In any other case, disengage.