What is the actual intent behind decimating NASA ? It's tiny compared to the defense budget and fairly high ROI in terms of maintaining US scientific leadership.
Good question. I suppose it's adjacent to the intent behind electing a felon career con man who committed sedition.
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I’m genuinely confused, are you asking for Big Ballz to be brought back?
You say that like it’s a worse option.
A RIF, but not a decimation. In 2024, NASA employed just under 18,000 civil servants. Additionally, NASA supports the employment of tens of thousands more through contracts, grants, and partnerships with various organizations, e.g. FFRDC, universities, etc.
2,000 is 11% of 18,000, so it’s almost exactly a decimation by the original meaning of that word
Like the New York Jets, NASA did one generationally awesome thing in 1969 and have been riding on the goodwill from that for the last 56 years. Both claim that their failures are due to underfunding and management issues but fans are becoming suspicious.
At the risk of feeding trolls: Voyager was 1969? Opportunity was 1969? Hubble was 1969? JWST was 1969?
Of all the catastrophic outcomes of this administration, what's happening at NASA is one of the saddest. The premier science and exploration institution, built over years by our most gifted, so much given back to society, gutted and disabled. And all for fucking what?
Sicophants that dream of replacing everybody with an avatar that can be silenced at will and which (not "who", nothing humane left) consumes via /agents/ that decides what /it/ needs.
Empty shells, transfering numbers.
Hell.
my guess is they want to replace the gov employees and programs with contracts so money can be funneled to cronies
TFA is playing coy about Laurie Leshin’s resignation as director of JPL:
> It’s not clear if Lystrup and Leshin’s departures are related to the ongoing turmoil at NASA and other government agencies.
It was crystal clear that Leshin resigned because she got crossways with administration politics.
It also seems apparent that Janet Petro, the former acting administrator, was exited for the same reason. The administration now has someone compliant as acting administrator while they burn the whole agency down.
The apparent lesson seems to be, “nothing in the government is allowed to do anything good”, or perhaps, “no source of authority may exist outside the administration“.