JPL Workforce Update - NASA
www.nasa.gov
Workforce statement and memo to employees.
  1. 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?

  • impartial_fanboy [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Runcible [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • seeking_perhaps [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago

        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.