- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
- I am directing most employees to work from home tomorrow, Wednesday, February 7, so everyone can be in a safe, comfortable environment on a stressful day. Most individuals will not be able to enter the Lab during this mandatory remote work day. A Lab access list has been created and those who will have access will be notified by email shortly. If you do not receive an email instructing you to be on Lab, please plan to work remotely, regardless of your telework agreement status. In addition, and to ensure we have everyone’s accurate contact information, I am also asking everyone to please review and update your personal email and phone number in Workday today.
I don't think I've ever seen a company or organization that had mandatory remote work day outside of really crazy weather during the peak of Covid. Perhaps it's to protect the equipment from distraught or disgruntled employees?
You must log in or register to comment.
So, hows privatizing the space sector going for you, America? Made any amazing scientific leaps lately?
mass layoffs and piss-leaking tourist shuttles.
(This is not me shitting on the amazing accomplishments of NASA scientists, but rather the gutting and selling off of NASA to the private sector and making their scientists jobs way harder than they need to be.)
Uhhhh didn’t you hear that we’re definitely going back to the moon and have a space telescope all to our own and it’s no one else’s named after a homophobe?
So, hows privatizing the space sector going for you, America?
Well JPL has always been this way but go off. This is essentially punishment for their (mis)handling of the Psyche mission and other recent bureaucratic fuck ups. Obviously since those who did the fucking up are in charge of budget allocation, the workers take the brunt of it but its not as gloom and doom as it seems.
Really they should just cancel SLS and nationalize SpaceX but Elon would have to do something unforgivable for them to actually do it.
You mean like blocking Ukraine from using its satellites when Putin tells him to?
They should’ve seized it the next day.
This is good actually, US sabotaging its most effective space exploration asset means more time for the others and less probablity of US exerting any real power into space.
NASA is an inseparable part of the US MIC and put a literal fucking SS officer in charge of its flagship program. Absolutely wild to see "leftists" supporting it because NASA gives us fun facts about Saturn's rings between enabling the GPS system the guides Israeli bombs into Palestinian hospitals.
If there is just one thing humanity should pay attention from the century of futurist thought it is that capitalism should be never allowed into space.
Is it that, or that KKKrakas should never be allowed to "explore" anything ever again?
That too, every nation involved in the western "great geographic discoveries" should be banned from having anything that can cross Karman Line.
I think it means more privatization. They will just throw mare money at SpaceX and Lockheed or something
Yes, but NASA is way less likely to waste those money.
This is good actually
You're kind of right, it will (hopefully) force JPL to get its shit together when it comes to project management but more importantly, JPL doesn't make rockets.
Sorry to burst your bubble but unless something major happens, the US is going to be the only one capable of projecting any power into space. China is good at playing catch-up but even their plans talk about a having a domestic fully reusable superheavy lift rocket in the 2040's, which could obviously be accelerated somewhat if circumstances demand but we're not talking about a Moon race type situation here. SpaceX/NASA are the only players here right now.
US literally forgot how to make rockets when their looted nazis died off and spend 10 years having to beg Russia for a lift. China is steadily keeping its announced terms for everything and basically caught up to NASA in 15 years of what NASA spent 70 to do. In the meantime US is defunding their one somewhat working agency and are throwing insane amount of cash to the Musk grift, which might amount to something due to sheer amount of money but is not nearly as effective an any other space agency and is inherently unstable like all other Musk grifts.
Seeing things like OP and believing USA over China is just utter stupidity.
Kinda funny how that works when you do something cool and then just let the brain drain rot it all away. Even the Rovers - Marc Roper is subjected to YouTube vids and science box subscriptions. Had engineering geniuses on tap and instead of training the next gen to refine practices and keep momentum they shed the talent and destroy the records so every subsequent generation has to reinvent the wheel.
Look I'm not saying it's a desirable position but I don't think misrepresenting the situation is helpful either.
US literally forgot how to make rockets when their looted nazis died off and spend 10 years having to beg Russia for a lift.
The ISS was complete so there was no more use for the shuttle other than bleeding money. Obviously the geopolitical situation allowed for them to use the cheap option, they are capitalists after all. But obviously those 90+ y/o nazi engineers were the real reason.
China is steadily keeping its announced terms for everything and basically caught up to NASA in 15 years of what NASA spent 70 to do.
CNSA has been around for 30 years and NASA for 66. It's also much easier to catch up (which they haven't) than to develop initially especially since they were cooperating until 2011. I wish China was putting more effort into their own version of Starship (Long March 9) but at least as of last year they don't intend to have it ready and fully reusable before 2040.
In the meantime US is defunding their one somewhat working agency and are throwing insane amount of cash to the Musk grift.
They're defunding planetary science, not Artemis really. Which is bad obviously but SpaceX is certainly less of a grift than Lockheed Martin or Boeing so I'm not sure where you would put that money instead.
Seeing things like OP and believing USA over China is just utter stupidity.
The OP is about JPL, the division actually being affected by the cuts. Again, they don't make rockets. CNSA says 2030 for the moon but it will be on Long March 10 (i.e. not reusable). NASA says 2026 (which admittedly will probably slip to 2027/2028) but it requires Starship to work. If China manages to get there first it would be impressive and a welcome surprise but they would be unable to sustain a presence there (just as the US was) without a fully reusuable superheavy vehicle.
Not germane to your points above but now that there are organizations other than NASA I am not actually sure that layoffs are detrimental (from a tech/development standpoint). Instead of layoffs resulting in the knowledge being lost people can just jump between JPL/SpaceX/Blue Origin and so on. This is one of the easier ways to get knowledge to distribute through the field since our economic system & IP laws discourage meaningful cooperation.
This is nice in theory, but isn't how knowledge transfer of this variety tends to happen in the aerospace industry. Many of those laid off have very specific expertise in niche areas of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Some of that is transferrable, but a lot is specific to things like Mars rovers and planetary science. Tearing those people away from JPL will result in the loss of a ton of institutional knowledge and much of it will not be applicable to the private sector and might just be lost all together.
Sweaty, how else can we fund genocide in Gaza and send weapons to Israel?
I kinda like nasa. I know about the whole operation paperclip and developing tech for the military, but space exploration is really cool. They put a couple dudes on the moon! Theres a helicopter on mars! Its a shame neolib policy has gutted them.
Used to be my dream to be an astronaut as a kid but than i learned they work you to the bone in space, there was even skylab 4 where the crew went on strike in space because the work was too much (looking it up again now it might be an urban legend)
they work you to the bone in space
that explains the bone density loss
Lots of cool tech starts out with military applications in mind. Take submarines, for example. Sure they started out as a means of sinking ships and drowned some confederate dipshits but nowadays we can go hang out with giant squids, find ancient ship wrecks, and occasionally implode a billionaire.
I hate to bring this up, but SpaceX (and I’m not giving Elon any credit here) as a private space company has done more significant advances than NASA has done in a long time.
NASA has no spacecrafts right now! American astronauts are riding SpaceX Crew Dragon to dock with the ISS. And before Crew Dragon’s first flight in 2020, they had to book Russian Soyuz to fly their astronauts into space.
Look at the SLS/Artemis, an over-bloated project in both time and money, while simultaneously managing to accomplish zero new innovation at all. It’s literally strapping 4 Space Shuttle’s rocket engines together (from literally the very same engines scrapped from the retired Space Shuttles) and using the same Solid Rocket Boosters (the very same defective booster design that caused the Challenger explosion) to get American astronauts back to the moon again (at least this is how it’s planned).
Where is the innovation? Where are the advancements? The same Space Shuttle rockets that are inferior to the Soviet rockets built in the 1980s, a country that has not existed for over 30 years!
At least SpaceX is trying something new with their Raptor engines. NASA is still stuck in their past glory, at least in terms of launch vehicles and spacecrafts. I’m not denying that there are some cool satellites and telescopes and stuff, but the heavy engineering that is going to blow everyone’s minds by achieving some incredible breakthroughs is not there anymore.
I assume you are not aware that this is NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab(JPL), not a general NASA layoff as you may have guessed from the headline. You seem to have based your entire comment on that premise if so this is all painful to read honestly, a huge miss.
The JPL is responsible for some of the most cutting edge research in space robotics and probes, the name is a relic of its origin in the post war era, it is not an actual rocket research factory or anything like that.
Even though there are obvious issues with the SLS program, I'm not sure how much of that is NASA's fault, right away you're giving NASA way too much credit and autonomy that doesn't exist IRL at all. The privatization was the point, SpaceX is the culmination of what started in the 70s so trying to give relative praise to SpaceX's achievements here is literaly the Obama self-medal meme. I would expect you to spot this from mile away. The US government defuned NASA after declaring the space race "won" and ever since then the budget is still less than it was in 1965!
America never actually gave a shit about space exploration, even though most Americans wouldn't mind a higher NASA budget there is nothing the public can do about it. The fact is the NASA isn't just "stuck" in past glory. Don't mistake NASA and their actual research for the shit America uses as daily life propaganda. Things like the Hubble, the JWST, all the Mars and space probes etc are all incredibly important and valuable, nobody would object to this fact.
And yet hardly any of that makes the news. It seems like NASA is irrelevant because yes to some extent if you only look at modern culture, the average American couldn't name a US space probe or gives a single fuck about Mars etc.
The JWST alone was a huge worldwide boost to astronomy and physics research, teams from around the world are eager and reliant on it.
Finally the point was always that nothing SpaceX does is uniquely because its a private company or anything. Yes I agree and indeed there is undeniably some cool tech behind the Raptor engines but that is not meaningful rhetoric, Its like saying the F-22 was a huge boost in composite material research. The US could have all of that through the public sector is the point.
It was a general comment, and I don’t see what you’re writing is anything fundamentally that disagree with what I wrote.
Also, as far as chemical rockets go, yes the Raptor engine is still at the leading edge. But as I have said before, even chemical rockets likely won’t see any significant breakthroughs anymore, especially for deep space exploration. The breakthroughs I’m talking about is the next Sputnik moment, and it’s not going to come from NASA/SpaceX anytime soon. There is no such projects as you see.
As someone in the industry, you missed the forest for the trees. There's a lot more to space exploration than just launch vehicle development. SpaceX isn't going to be doing bespoke Mars rover missions anytime soon unless it has a profit motive. JPL offers a very unique product in these one-off science-driven missions that the private industry has yet to be able to replicate and may never have the incentive to do so. Further gutting JPL just means losing out on those missions, which offer valuable scientific returns to the world. JPL is the reason we have rovers driving and a helicopter flying on Mars, oribters around the gas giants, satellites in interstellar space. The list goes on.
The privatization was the point, SpaceX is the culmination of what started in the 70s so trying to give relative praise to SpaceX's achievements here is literaly the Obama self-medal meme.
What are you talking about?
Not OP, but I think the first part of the sentence you quoted is what they're talking about. SpaceX, a private company that is now the cutting edge of space tech in the US, is what you get as a result of general efforts to privatize everything. These efforts ramped up dramatically in the 70's, from my understanding.
I hate to bring this up, but SpaceX (and I’m not giving Elon any credit here) as a private space company has done more significant advances than NASA has done in a long time.
Most of the fundamental technology breakthroughs were achieved by NASA in the 90's but due to various issues, the space shuttle being the obvious one (thanks Nixon/Agnew), they were not followed up on. Also NASA has worked very closely with SpaceX essentially from the beginning, just another case of the government selling off technology to a private company because it's the only way things change in this country.
NASA has no spacecrafts right now!
NASA has never built rockets or passenger carrying spacecraft. They have always contracted them out, yes even the Saturn V, with NASA oversight/management. Also you literally bring up Artemis so not sure what you're talking about.
using the same Solid Rocket Boosters (the very same defective booster design that caused the Challenger explosion)
You'll notice how they haven't had an accident since either but you can literally thank Obama for SLS.
At least SpaceX is trying something new with their Raptor engines.
Which itself is based on old Soviet and Aerojet Rocketdyne designs. Just like how Starship's design is inspired by the N1.
I’m not denying that there are some cool satellites and telescopes and stuff, but the heavy engineering that is going to blow everyone’s minds by achieving some incredible breakthroughs is not there anymore.
It was never there. Apollo only got funded as a way to 'peacefully' develop ICBM and related technologies. If China manages to land on the Moon before the US does again then perhaps there might be a similar program for Mars or an effort to industrialize LEO but while China is making progress in space they don't seem to be making it a priority and I would be genuinely surprised if they manage to make it to the Moon before the US/SpaceX does.
Edit: Also even if China did manage to somehow beat the US to the moon they don't have a fully reusable superheavy rocket (even their plans talk about the 2040's) so it would be a significant but ultimately very temporary victory.
Again, none of this disagrees with what I wrote. You aren’t going to see any breakthroughs soon, either from NASA or SpaceX.
However, I do find this comment a bit strange:
You'll notice how they haven't had an accident since either but you can literally thank Obama for SLS.
A fundamental design flaw is a fundamental design flaw. You can say that they have since fixed and strengthened the O-ring until the final cancellation of the Space Shuttle program, but that doesn’t change the fact that it poses significant risks to the crew. Just because a poorly designed car hasn’t run into accident, doesn’t mean it’s a safe vehicle. When the accident eventually happens, you’re more likely to be dead than alive.
Furthermore, solid rockets shouldn’t be used for manned space flights, especially for a country as rich as the US. The only reasons to use them is because it’s cheap, and easy to build, and can be stored for years, yes. But there’s a reason the Russians use liquid propellant rockets for their manned space flights. Solid rockets cannot be throttled, and if it explodes, there’s no way to abort the crew safely.
Again, none of this disagrees with what I wrote. You aren’t going to see any breakthroughs soon, either from NASA or SpaceX.
I mean ... you're disagreeing with what you wrote so I don't know what to tell you.
To begrudgingly defend SpaceX here, if Starship actually works as advertised it actually is a game changer. Their intended launch cadence makes things like Skyhooks a realistic consideration which in turn would make Sci-Fi levels of interplanetary activity possible. Even the semi-reusable Falcon 9 has made a big difference in the launch market, for better or worse, Starlink and the other satellite constellations would not have been anywhere near the realm of profitability without it.
Solid rockets cannot be throttled, and if it explodes, there’s no way to abort the crew safely.
For the Shuttle yeah but Orion has launch abort capability. I agree they shouldn't be used on principle but SLS is a jobs program that happens to build rockets, not the other way around.
NASA is bloated by government bureaucracy and red tape. They're also limited by their engineers and scientists because they pay poorly (don't get the best talent) and don't offer incentives such as promotions and there's no equity to grow multiples of if they succeed (no motivation to work hard). And until now, there was guaranteed job security no matter how little they worked so there was also no fear instilled into the employees. Glad they're letting the workers know now though that they actually have to produce something of value to earn their paychecks
SpaceX fixes literally all of these problems by virtue of being a private sector corporation participating in the free market rather than a publicly funded state apparatus with 0 interest of generating profits
I'm a libertarian socialist that believes in the power of free markets, infinite growth, and profits chasing
I'm not sure if you're agreeing that you're a parody or not so I'll give a short serious answer.
NASA being underfunded and bloated is intentional. It was neither of those things in the 1950s and 60s, but since Nixon got the moon landing he wanted the whole point of NASA has shifted from pushing the boundaries of space exploration to providing key technologies to the private sector, and over time everything NASA does has become about feeding money to private corporations.
Meanwhile SpaceX underpays and overworks its engineers to the point of a psychotic break as its normal policy. It is currently the place that you tough out for a year or two to get it on your resume, and then flee as fast and as far as you can to a more reasonable job. Everything SpaceX is doing could be done for half price without giving a generation of aerospace scientists PTSD by NASA if they were funded properly and not intentionally hogtied by Congress and the military.
SpaceX lists entry level Engineering positions for $115-185k and is hiring an incredibly young crowd (i.e. this isn't gated by a huge amount of experience) so I don't know that you could say they are underpaid but the hours are clearly hellish and it seems unbelievably disorganized. But yes to the rest, it seems a lot like what Amazon was to software devs.
You're not getting paid $115k as an early career hire there for most roles. Have several friends there and, compared to the rest of the LA aersopace market, it's probably a $10-20k cut.
The company I work for did layoffs last year. They closed the office for the day and blocked all deployments. I think it's exactly that - reduce risk to software and equipment.
I'm not sure why JPL is calling it a mandatory remote work day, most people probably won't be working. Not to defend my company but at least they were like "just fuckin stay out of the office we dont care if you work or not"
Nah, I've heard of techy-sciencey companies doing that right before they do more rounds of layoffs, so I assume this is just the first round, they want to stagger them for some reason.
The other common one and my last company did this shit to me was they give you a week long vacation along with some other workers for no reason and they keep extending it, then bam fired.
I'm just a cashier and that's a super common one, along with 'hmm only 4 hrs this month, well okay then'. They fired like 4 people at a really small store right before holidays at my job doing the vacation thing + 4 hrs a month.
Perhaps it's to protect the equipment from distraught or disgruntled employees?
Going postal.Going nasa.
According to stories from old people, when mass layoff were happening youd get everyone away from their desks and into whatever big meeting room. The youd them not to return to their desks after receiving the news to (,futilely) prevent theft. Preventing from entering the building outright might suddenly be more effective, at most you lose the single laptop/phone you handed out.
Shame. NASA, the National Parks, and PBS are some of the few things I'm willing to admit I like about
.probably the hundreds of workers that just lost their jobs because our congress prioritizes weapons and "border security" over space exploration
i don't see how working for JPL is "working for the MIC" in even the most generous of interpretations.
no I'm being completely serious. we're talking about the place that builds Mars rovers, not weapons. unless just working for the US govt qualifies, in which case, sure.
