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janrinok writes in with the following story:
The second round of deferred resignations for NASA staff closed on Friday, and the agency says roughly 3,000 employees applied to leave, according to Bloomberg. The Trump administration first offered the deferred resignation program as a buyout to government workers in January as it gutted the federal workforce under the guidance of DOGE — then led by Elon Musk — asking employees to resign while still receiving benefits and pay for a period of time. In the earlier round, 870 NASA employees reportedly opted to leave. The space agency opened a second round in June, with a July 25 deadline.
The latest batch of applications brings the total to nearly 4,000 employees, or roughly 20 percent of NASA's workforce, according to a statement provided to Bloomberg. It comes after Politico reported earlier this month that over 2,000 senior NASA staff members have agreed to leave.
NASA is grappling with proposed budget cuts that could crush the agency's science programs and result in the loss of thousands of jobs. A group of current and former NASA employees called on Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to reject the "harmful cuts" in a letter published on July 21, writing that recent policies "threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30 2025, @03:25AM (6 children)
Every time I see what destruction he has caused to people's lives
I wonder how much money he's made.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday July 30 2025, @07:17AM (5 children)
Probably quite a bit, given that by destroying NASA he removes a large source of competition to SpaceX.
Also, isn't Musk the Second Banana? I think Trump was the Dear Leader.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 31 2025, @06:52AM (4 children)
My view is that NASA shouldn't be that competition to SpaceX. They're incredibly terrible at it. We have a 60 year record that proves that. Here's my view [soylentnews.org]:
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday July 31 2025, @06:08PM (3 children)
How was NASA inhibiting the rest of the world?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 01 2025, @12:31AM (2 children)
Well, consider the original supposition that we need NASA to provide competition for the US launch market. Surely, we would similarly need competition for a global space industry as well, right? So when the largest user of space creates strong anti-competitive dynamics in the US, they reduce competition in the world as a whole.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday August 01 2025, @12:36AM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 01 2025, @01:31AM
Big enough for what? Also there's an obvious way economically to fix something that genuinely isn't big enough - grow it bigger. Economic sectors are notorious for being able to grow and shrink quickly when conditions are right (or very wrong). My view is that the price drop from Falcon 9 has already grown the global private space market considerably.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday July 30 2025, @03:19PM (2 children)
What is NASA's core mission? I googled it and got back a dozen different things. I always thought NASA was aerospace/space development. Like if I wanted to build a rocket, I could ask NASA for plans.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 30 2025, @05:15PM
Whatever it is, I can tell you something about "voluntary layoffs" or whatever you call this style of Reduction In Force: It's not the deadwood that's hitting the exits.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 01 2025, @01:25AM
Here. [cornell.edu] And yes, it is more than a dozen different things. I don't think that the diffuseness of NASA's "core" mission is that significant - it has received for its entire existence far more funding than necessary to cover multiple missions. I think rather that normal bureaucratic dysfunction explains the many decades of ineffective and inefficient NASA priorities and activities.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday July 30 2025, @03:37PM (9 children)
The Tump administration has eliminated about 120,000 federal job through buyouts and firings during President Trump's second term. If trimming 4% of the federal work force is "gutting" it, how would you characterize the 400,000 federal jobs (13% of the workforce at that time) eliminated by the Clinton administration?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 30 2025, @05:19PM (5 children)
Yeah, but did Clinton hire an additional 10,000 agents who run around detaining people without due process? That's gonna be a lot of lawsuits, gotta pay for 'em somehow.
In my personal timeline, the Clinton years were "peak" for US quality of life. Not that Clinton was a genius or doing anything even particularly great, he just didn't screw up what he was handed, and trickle-down hadn't really started to soak in yet.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday July 30 2025, @05:48PM (4 children)
No. If you recall, it's because he didn't need to. Unlike President Trump's predecessor, Ronald Reagan didn't fling open the borders and distribute hundreds of thousands criminal illegals to cities throughout the US in the dead of night. He didn't use taxpayer dollars to put them up in luxury hotels or provide them with monthly SNAP benefits and Medicaid either.
How about due process for the taxpayers? When we be compensated for the four years of fleecing?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 30 2025, @07:20PM (2 children)
> Ronald Reagan didn't fling open the borders and distribute hundreds of thousands criminal illegals to cities throughout the US in the dead of night.
Ummm..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday July 30 2025, @08:32PM (1 child)
Ummm...
"The Mariel boatlift (Spanish: éxodo del Mariel) was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980"
Sorry, that was yet another of Jimmy Carter's bad choices. President Reagan wasn't inaugurated to his first term until Jan 20, 1981.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 30 2025, @08:42PM
> President Reagan wasn't inaugurated to his first term until Jan 20, 1981.
And Reagan wasn't Clinton's predecessor.
Looks to me like immigration did nothing but accelerate during the Reagan Bush years (and Clinton) - didn't really "turn the corner" and start to level off until Biden took office.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/ [pewresearch.org]
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday July 31 2025, @06:11PM
Out of curiosity, have you spotted any fleecing from the current administration?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 3, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday July 30 2025, @10:03PM (2 children)
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/06/yes-bill-clinton-offered-mass-federal-employee-buy/ [politifact.com]
To summarize: The Clinton Administration took several months to review and plan with the departments and unions having input, and got near-unanimous buy-in from Congress to facilitate the reduction, which was done over time via buyouts and attrition in a non-hostile manner.
The current clown show went in with a chainsaw and started cutting. No plan other than cutting. No input from departments or unions. No buy in from Congress.
To summarize the summary: Clinton had a plan. The current POTUS does not.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Thursday July 31 2025, @12:55PM (1 child)
"No plan other than cutting."
This seems to be a common theme from your side. The facts tell a far different story. President Trump has been surgically precise in targeting the cuts at entities of the federal government that advance a woke, far-left agenda with our taxpayer dollars. USAID is probably the best example, along with the Department of "Education".
Starting under Obama, NASA went from an organization that was based on science to a political advocacy organization based on junk science, so not surprisingly, it's been targeted.
"Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) provided numerical proof that NASA’s mission was hijacked to push radical global warming theories, “In the last 6 years…we’ve seen earth sciences increase 41 percent, and we’ve seen exploration and space operations—what should be the core mission, what NASA exists to do—decrease 7.6 percent.” Earth Sciences is the primary NASA department for global warming activities.
In 2012, 49 former NASA astronauts and distinguished scientists wrote a letter asking Administrator Bolden to stop using NASA to push radical global warming theories. They warned that NASA’s 'advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study' puts at risk 'the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.'"
https://capitalresearch.org/article/nasa/ [capitalresearch.org]
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday July 31 2025, @08:48PM
Sure... I'll believe that from a known conservative "watchdog group". No bias there, no sirree...
Anytime I see the words "far-left woke" and "radical global warming theories" coming from a conservative it's going to be an overblown out of context line of BS. Your diatribe above is a shining example of that.
Far better to be a "woke lefty" than a comatose RWNJ. On that, I bid you Good Day, sir.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 31 2025, @05:02PM (2 children)
https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/nasas-workforce-is-aging/ [nasawatch.com]
Not to disrupt the very important political rants/prayers but I looked up the workforce stats and somewhere around 4% of 18K or about 700 people quit/die every year back in the 2010s when the NASA workforce was much younger, merely older-middle-aged.
HOWEVER, nasa is very boomer, extraordinarily boomer, and the linked article above explains something like 44% of their workforce hit retirement age in 2023, 56% are 50 or over...
Any time you wave a retirement package in the faces of retirement age people, you'll get a lot of takers.
As long as NASA refuses to hire anyone gen-X or younger, they will waste away due to natural aging as they are not making any more boomers and they're disappearing from the workforce.
The hiring policies in the first quarter-century of the 2000s where NASA generally refuses to hire anyone born after the moon landings is kind of a NASA-caused problem. Everyone old enough to know what was going on during the moon landings, to have actively watched them, is either already retired or soon to retire.
It seems like NASA offices are a retirement home. Its like talking about "forcibly" retiring the members of the Beetles... Paul McCartney is, I believe, 83.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Friday August 01 2025, @08:29PM
"As long as NASA refuses to hire anyone gen-X or younger"
Have you considered the fact that there a lot less of them who are actually hirable? They are experts on all the -isms, -cists and great at pronouns, but hard sciences? Not so much.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday August 02 2025, @09:44AM
Lot of claims being made here, but I don’t see any evidence and most seem doubtful. Like refusing to hire young people? And that they’re all retirement age?