Concern about SpaceX influence at NASA grows with new appointee. “Morale at the space agency is absurdly low, sources say.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/as-nasa-flies-into-turbulence-the-agency-could-use-a-steady-hand/
Concern about SpaceX influence at NASA grows with new appointee. “Morale at the space agency is absurdly low, sources say.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/as-nasa-flies-into-turbulence-the-agency-could-use-a-steady-hand/
26 Comments
Kinda sorta what happens when you let authoritarianism take hold.
The fact that Eric Berger, who is usually very pro-SpaceX, wrote this article, makes the whole situation all the more depressing.
But Eric Burger said everyone at NASA was extremely happy with Trump, Elon and the new appointee. He wrote several articles saying that a majority of NASA was insanely happy at the idea of finally canceling the SLS program… this is some mixed signals Eric..
Elon and his crew meddling and dismantling the US governance systems is going to send the US in to a death spiral. The US empire is crumbling. Elon is doing to the US what he did to Twitter.
It’s already over.
Morale is absurdly low? As opposed to when they failed to safely bring Starliner crew in the Starliner, or when the ramping costs of Artemis and years of delays were happening?
If morale is absurdly low, then those people should not have been at NASA in the first place. We are launching stuff now, not siphoning taxpayers money now, no wonder your morale is in the dumpster.
Dismantling the administrative state as Elon is doing leaves corporations like SpaceX to be the only ones with assets after the fleecing is complete. There won’t be so much a public-private partnership, as it is now, moreso a total absence of competition, oversight, and accountability to the public or their employees.
Morale of at least half of the country is also at the historic low.
Musk going to force NASA to shutter so all it’s employees have to work in the private sector a laSpace X for his benefit.
Well considering an unelected official is rampaging his way through the department of the Treasury racking up data to manipulate everyone, I think everyone’s morale is absurdly low.
NASA is under existential threat. The organization that took him beings to the moon.
If there’s something worth fighting for, NASA is on the list.
Oh shit, not SOURCES! It must be both true and significant.
SpaceX so far seems to have a rather better track record than recent NASA, afaik (I don’t know a great amount)
Things like the James Webb don’t happen when space is privatized. In fact it’s very unlikely we’ll reach Mars or long-term human orbit if space is privatized.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mav2u0h “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mavbkav “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mav345z “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mavf954 “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mavbnj8 “Last usage”)|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1ih7phn/stub/mavbkav “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^([Thread #11027 for this sub, first seen 4th Feb 2025, 03:54])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Concern? The guy can literally write himself any contract he wants. He’s in control of the treasury payment offices.
Do you know how much talent has left NASA over the last 15 years because of the bullshit they have to put up with? I know about a dozen or so folks who at one time in the last 20 years worked at NASA and they have all left and gone into the private sector so they can get actual work done. The political nature of these administrations is not conducive for doing long term, large scale aerospace, space science. So maybe this is part of the plan, get rid of NASA and let the private sector run roughshod over the process.
To be honest, I don’t care how NASA feels. They’ve failed to keep up with the modern space race. Their supposed “sure-bet” project: the SLS, is a total nightmare. It started development in 2011 and has launched once. ONE launch, in 14 years. It’s a shit rocket, and the only reason it’s still alive is because of bureaucracy. Technology has evolved so much in the 14 years since development started that SLS was outdated before it even launched.
NASA is bloated and no longer contains the young, driven engineers it needs to be successful. It’s a relic. Too scared of failure. Too many people working there stuck in the past. It’s not even their fault: technology just changed faster than they could.
Their one accomplishment since the start of this decade has been the James Webb telescope. James Webb was originally supposed to launch in *2007*.
I’ll always love NASA for their historical importance and the image that they represent. But as an organization, they are no longer effective, useful, or worth spending huge amounts of money on. Give that money to the young engineers who have the vision, drive, and knowledge to do something incredible with it.
Cut all of Elons government contracts and fund NASA the way it used to be. FUCK NAZI’s BTW!
If this was enough of a push to get their moral that low it must have been pretty low already. Maybe NASA will actually start achieving things again rather than taking a backseat and contracting everything out for once. Like, maybe build your own crew capsule instead of the Starliner disaster with Boeing
… I forgot about NASA. everything going on I completely forgot the agency even existed:-/
I would have assumed that NASA should be like engineers when the calculator came out; they mostly didn’t lament the loss of the slide rule, but broadened how much they could do.
I would argue that NASA should seriously even give up on the moon, and focus on what is needed for things like asteroid mining. There would be a commercial goldrush if they found anything interesting, which they could then use to piggyback ever further.
Weirdly, musk isn’t seeing the moon as a launch point, but also wants to go to mars.
NASA should always be “Boldly going where no man has gone before.”
But, instead of they are somewhat doing the same old same old with the likes of Boeing and have nearly perfectly rebooted Gilligan’s Island, but in space. “A three-hour tour….”
I would argue that whatever BS bureaucratic process selected Boeing is exactly what is holding them back and driving out talent. SpaceX is not the problem, it just shows how below par they have mostly become.
Also, Elon we can’t get our astronauts home. Do you mind doing our job?
NASA? Hmmm I remember them. A lot of over promising and under delivering lately. Artemis where are you?!?
Appointee. Do you suppose there’s any real paper trail to back that up?
Cool. Did not know NASA was even around anymore. What have they been doing for the last ten years?
What sources? Reddit users with a hate boner for Elon? ULA executives?
Without spaceX, we would still be launching people on Russian Soyuz, paying like 500 million a launch for basic commercial launches, etc. SpaceX smoked the entire rest of the planet combined on launch technology… so how could anyone at NASA have low moral right now?
SpaceX kicked off a golden age in spaceflight, that somehow gaining momentum as starship comes online.
And if you’re not happy with spaceX… then be happy that spaceX proved reusable orbital launches… that other companies and countries are copying. This is a win for everyone.