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NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Lays Off 300 Engineers
Ghost of Von Karmen writes "NASA JPL, the lab that brought us missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and the Mars Exploration Rovers will eliminate about 300 engineering related positions due to Congressional budget cuts, according to various sources. The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space. Prof. Elachi, head of JPL has indicated that the lab may pursue Department of Defense contracts to minimize additional reductions in personnel."
The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space.
The cuts reflect the tremendous cost of warmongering around the world...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Because humans in space is the most important way to conduct space exploration.
Okay... I couldn't keep a straight face either.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
That's a bad sign of the times. Especially the DoD part. Granted, one can make tons of money on DoD work, but still, that's not what space is supposed to be about.
--LWM
At the same time I feel sad that something as beneficial to science, humanity, technology, economy, and to our lives can be cut so easily. But when it comes to the military or pork projects, a blank check is issued.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Commenting here will accomplish nothing. You MUST write your Congressional representative. Be civil.
America is becoming de-industrialized and what does this administration do? they drop funding for some of the U.S. top robotics engineers. It appears that we will be staying behind other countries like Japan for the foreseeable future.
nothing happening here. (sic)
move along
Gov't employees laid off..
Is this April 1st?
Seriously though, remember it's not about the science.
It's about making it safe for corporations to own things in space. Corporations need people in space, not robots. Right now, the people are cheaper and do more than robots.
Not researching robots and spending lots of money figuring out how to make them do things is another public policy misstep. Sad.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
That's just great...Let's spend $200 billion on war, kill and get killed and cut down on science and R&D...
That's just awsome, that's how we stay on "cutting edge" of science. Way to go 'Dubya'
Since we all know human exploration is the most cost effective option - I don't think.
And I'm sure somebody will say that education is still usefull- despite this becoming almost a cliche story. You never hear "Major Labortory/Tech Company to lay off C-level exectutives in an attempt to keep R&D running". Why would any young person go into science or technology if this is the way they treat people?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"We'll let the Chinese do it!"
The Raven
One of my main CNC/machining suppliers does 20% of his business with NASA but they account for 95% of his profits.
I recently saw some of his invoices and NASA is typical government waste. Take your $300 toilet seats and $600 screw drivers and double it.
I really want the FOIA to open up every invoice for public consumption in PDF real time. NASA is no friend of the taxpayers.
Is NASA really getting a budget cut or did they just overspend with the cronies again?
Wouldn't the Politically Correct term in this case be... jettisoned?
Then again, politics always confuses me...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Well, at least we have money to spend about $10 billion each month in Iraq.
The Republican government lays yet another blow on science in America. As if Bush coming out and saying he supports Intelligent Design wasn't bad enough, now we're going to lose 300 of our most experienced robotic mission specialists. I hear China is looking to put a robot on the Moon by the end of the decade, maybe they can find work with the communists?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
What stupidity is this? Robots are the cheapest way to explore space. The technology advances in robotics actually have real use on Earth. Yep, let's remove the federally funded program that has the most impact at NASA and replace it with a pipe dream of 2 missions. One to the moon, and one to mars. What then. Astronaut: Hmm, hey it would be nice to have some remote control robots out there in the harshest environments ever... or, Astronaut: Let's climb into a plastic bag filled with air and dance around in a low G environment. Oops, don't fall down, or you puncture your suit and quickly die.
$6BILLION a month to cover for Bush's WMD lies in Iraq would pay for a lot of JPL engineers. Hell, if we sent $6BILLION of JPL engineers a month to Iraq instead of invading, Iraq would have a Moon base by now.
--
make install -not war
Listen to Elachi's speeches.
This is not a permanent shift from robotics to manned exploration in the NASA mindset. This is a painful but hopefully temporary shift to get the CEV up faster so we don't have such a large down time between when the shuttle expires and the CEV comes on line. Robotics is still the acknowledged way to go, just not this year.
JPL funding for '06 is the same order of magnitude as '03, just much less than '04 and '05.
perhaps the mods can't figure out that perhaps this budget could have been balanced with human exploration projects, but due to the staggering cost of war, only one budget could win.
mod up
Wreck everything I care about! NASA, the environment, US image in the world, the value of my paycheck, etc etc etc. Mod me troll, flamebait, offtopic, whatever... but as far as I'm concerned that man has been afflicted with a strage version of the Midas touch- everything he touches turns to shit. Setting lofty goals at NASA and then cutting science missions and the budget is a brilliant idea. Oh, wait, no it isn't.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
This news really saddens me. But I will say this. I read a great book about a year ago about the design and building of Sojourner, the rover that accompanied Pathfinder to Mars, and I recall a part about there not always being enough work for the engineers that they had. It would not be uncommon for a project to end, and for someone to not have a project in which to go.
Hey, I guess you can have an unjust war based on lies, or you can have science, but not both. Throw a hurricane in and it all really goes to hell.
Ignore Alien Orders
The advetised rate of unemployment is 6%, but once people stop collecting their money, they're no longer counted. Anyone know the true percentage of people without work in the US?
God spoke to me.
I bow down to our not-so-new budget cutting overlords.
In addition to a large number of contractor layoffs already occurring thoughout NASA, such as those at JPL, there will likely be a reduction in the civil-servant payroll via layoffs as well.
While I agree that we need to transition from Shuttle to something else, its not going to be a painless process. Many very skilled scientists and engineers will lose their job because it isnt applicable to the immediate needs of the human exploration program.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Email has a habit of getting deleted or lost in the spam.
Faxing produces a peice of paper that doesn't go through security and is harder to get deleted.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
At least Google is sticking their foot in the door. Space exploration is better off without a retardedly huge budget from the government anyway. Look how little has been accomplished in the last 30 years.
Maybe with Google's help, we can start putting efforts toward perfecting cheaper ways to get people into space.
Not that I think space elevators are a feasible idea with current technology. But we are getting closer and it's a much more intelligent idea for getting people up there than using 987239487294872394 gallons of fuel on each launch. Money would be better spent in researching elevators.
Of course, it's probably not being researched more because most people are still like little kids playing with firecrackers; they like the huge explosions of rockets!
Ridiculous.
Uhh hello? Don't we need like robots to
A. Repair hubble
B. Explore mars and moon landsites for us humans so we dont land on spikey rocks and
C. I would have sworn i heard some nasa jpl guy say in the future of "space" as it seems that "we humand and ROBOTS" would need to WORK TOGETHER or else this is spelling out the ending of manned space flight. Oh wait i mean this is the new order of military orbital strikes in space and we man them and then theres no robot to say error error your ORBITAL BASE has malfunctioned.
During some news report I actually heard that it was closer to around 8-10% - they're a lot more honest in Europe in how they count people without employment. Basically, in Europe:
unemployed = No income
In the U.S.:
unemployed = Collecting unemployment
Honorable [name]:
Thank you for cutting the budget of [department]. It is obvious that you understand our Federast Republic as well as the limits the Constitution sets over your powers.
I am glad that you also understand that the [number] jobs eliminated will reappear in greater numbers in private businesses that will grow stronger from the money taxpayers won't have to spend supporting unconstitutional programs.
I appreciate your ability to restrain your powers and offer your constituents the chance to spend their hard earned money as their households and families need.
Yours truly,
Citizen [your name]
[your address]
If one really want to cut costs, one should replace employees (especially astronauts) with robots. Oh wait, they got rid of the engineers who were going to make the robots. Never mind.
The Department of Defense are the guys who screwed up the shuttle program (too many design changes for spying missions that never happened, especially polar flights out of Andrews).
In his novel Voyage, Stephen Baxter postulated an alternate reality where NASA went to Mars after the Moon. There were no landings post-Apollo 13, and much space science was sacrificed on the altar of Mars. No Voyager, no Pioneer, etc... They didn't even believe that a Venus flyby gravity assist trajectory to Mars would work or even be possible.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Of course this doesn't count the underemployed, and could be construed to not count the people who lost their jobs due to Katrina, as "Prevented from working by bad weather" is listed as a reason NOT to be counted as unemployed.
That being said, do I think they purposely skew the data to underreport unemployment? Of course they do.
Merde, il pleut encore!
wow good job, you were like #38. yeah guess what, there's no such thing as posting "first" on slashdot dumbass.
The kid is in town and he gets paid. Every single group that paid got PAID.
Big oil, big pharma, Halliburton, Religous right, Banks, Real Estate, Developers etc. etc. etc.
Didn't see JPL on that list.. goodbye.
We spend 4 billion a month on iraq, and can't find the money to pay a few engineers. We have to cut the deficit, yet we can just spend any amount on 'defense'. You pro-bush retards are going to be real happy when he's finished putting you back into the 3rd world.
wow what a dumb ass......this is the classic boob falling for the most obvious thing........well i guess im not the only thats tired of coding on a friday....muchas gracias....someones dumber than me.....
Human exploration may not be the most efficient way at this time for getting maximum scientific value for the money we spend on a mission. Satellites and probes can work quite well in improving our understanding of the universe and the planets. Not that I dont want to see human exploration developed, but with current technology it is very expensive. Maybe with anti-gravity, unlimited energy technology (over unity), faster than light travel, and a small scale simulation of the earths fields to protect people in the craft, from radiation, and it might be feasible to do it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A649 74-2004Jul20.html
...oh wait, I hate Bush. Please, forget I ever posted this; he actually prepares the entire NASA budget in a locked room without any help.
Posted July 21, 2004 on the Washington Post
"A key congressional subcommittee slashed President Bush's NASA budget request by more than $1 billion yesterday, dealing a sharp early blow to the administration's efforts to set in motion an ambitious plan to send humans to the moon and Mars."
The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space.
Uhhh, let me get this straight they're demphasizing robotics and emphasizing humans by laying off 300 humans?!?! Next thing you know you'll hear that they're increasing their IT budget.
No Sigs!
I wonder if the Nasa engineers were making as much as the Delphi "Lawn Mowers" making $65/hour, that are being asked to downgrade to $12/hour. Ok I'm lacking a link and my Google skills are failing me. But take my word for it, there was a story on google news yesterday where the CEO defended the cuts and also the increases to executives, while making the "lawn mower" remark.
~jennifer.k~
From the article and slashdot post:
I know it's way over simplifying, but does anyone sense a certain irony that now as we move to a payload of humans in space travel rather than robotics, the workforce to support that is reduced?
That being said, do I think they purposely skew the data to underreport unemployment? Of course they do.
No, they're very thorough and consistent. They measure unemployement according to 6 different categories. This started in 1994. Before that, they only had one measurement. They currently peg the U-3 category used now against the old system used prior to '94.
If you want, you can see the statistics and descriptions here or even make yourself some graphs here
But I'm not sure what you remember.
Some terrorists flew planes into our buildings and killed a bunch of our people.
So we invaded Afghanistan because that is where the group that they belonged to were headquartered at the time.
Then, for some reason, we invaded Iraq. And we're still paying for Iraq. And our people are still dying in Iraq.
What did Iraq have to do with those terrorists?
I think the current state of space exploration can be seen as "trying to run before learning to walk". We are trying to leap from the Computer Age right into the Space Age. A smoother progress might be going from the Computer Age to a Robotics/Nano-Machines Age to first stablize the these important technologies on Earth before applying them to space.
Of course this doesn't count the underemployed
No kidding. I'd like to see some stats on all the guys like my uncle. MS in physics from CalTech, and working in the tool department at Sears for 8 bucks an hour.
You morons who are taking every opportunity to bash the President should stop drinking the Kool-Aid for a few days. The War will continue, period. The Hurrincanes have a Massive Cost that MUST be paid. The space program is in a transitional period. I would bet there very few, if any, shuttle flights remaining. NASA, like EVERY OTHER AGENCY is taking cuts. Because Bush hates science? No, because the first to things are PIRORITY and the Government (IE Bush) is attempting to PAY for them. Not take out loas, not, tax more, they are trying to PAY for it. If you have a better way of doing it withou saying "TAX THE RICH" (who pay 50-75% of the taxes in the US anyway) lets hear it. Otherwise QUIT YOUR FSCKING WHINING!!!!!! the only thing worse than someone who uses hindsight to critque others, are those who then say how horrible that person is without being in their place for one minute.
And if you want the REALLY SCARY moment... while you're sitting there typing, there are probably dozens of threats that none of us will ever know about. While you critisize, there are REAL Men who go out and do. While you defame and harass, Real Men Die. So Do, or shut the hell up.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Thst cost of Dubya's game of GI-JOE will cost us more than we realize- I have a feeling that this is only one of many side-effects we'll be seeing.
Gee, a post that openly and visciously mocks those who have been spared by the Blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, gets moderated up through the roof on Slashdot. And, of course, any post that dares to stand up for family, morality, and God gets rated down to -1 almost immediately. I'm sick and tired of people claiming that Slashdot does not have an extreme left bias. And I'm going to make the problem even worse by bidding you all farewell.
Not only this, but it used be that the top executive at Fortune 500 companies 20 years age got something like 20X what a "normal" lay person gets paid (though I'm sure stock options were there aplenty to). These days it's ballooned to ballooned to 50x and up. And when they do get laid off, they have so many parachute clauses and termination pay-offs that being laid-off is the best thing that could have every happened to them - you don't even have to be good at your job - witness Carlo Fiorina at HP. Or Meg Whitman at Ebay - (she's a billionaire from heading ebay! And I was there from the beginning, DESPITE her blunders, it was going up anyway, if anything it was a free ride).
2 /b3885011_mz001.htm
Sorry if it seems I'm picking on the girls, these just happen to be the companies I follow--.--, there are percentage wise also a lot of crappy guy CEOs - Darl McBride for one.
The CEO of Costco is one of those people I still look up to in business, most of the rest are ratbags willing to sell out the company in order to grab as much as they can in their short tenors as leaders. The Costco CEO (and co-founder, I believe) only pays himself 250,000 a year and insists on paying his workers a decent wage (something like 15-16 dollars/hour to start with) plus health benefits unlike Walmart.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_2
don't worry, this is a good thing... the NASA chief was actually sent from the future to stop advances in robotic technology in order to thwart the rise of terminator robots in the near future. The key space-time point is to stop a lowly intern from sending up some new programming to the Mars rovers early next year that, coupled with a lightening strike on Mars, will give rise to sentient intelligence on the rover which will build an army of invading rovers each equipped with rock drill bits that will kill us all by taking core samples through our foreheads. Good work Elachi!
Google just hired 300 former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab engineers who used to work next door.
I currently work on a JPL project.
We've been having budget problems for a while now. Two big causes are Hubble and the President's space exploration plan. We got a budget cut when they decided they wanted to investigate repairing Hubble. Then we got more cuts to divert money to the President's plan.
Working here is nothing like working for industry. We do things as efficiently as we can because we have barely enough money to keep operating. We use free software tools when we can, we only buy computers when they go on sale, etc.
Keep in mind the highly talented and educated engineers here are working for much less money than they would get in industry because they think it is worthwhile.
I wonder if China is going to be at these engineer's doorsteps as soon as they get laid off to snatch em up for their own space program. This could be a big loss for an already low US engineering market.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
NASA should learn to do and achieve/deliver more with less. Heck, how come the Russians can do it?
For slashdotters' information, giant Russian Antonov-124 cargo aircraft are the ones doing the heavy lifting in Pakistan. We in the US have nothing comparable. Sad!
The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space. ... and human exploration of space where we push to new frontiers was of course never aided tremendously by state of the art robotic technology and research. :-p This is the Jet Propulsion Labs. Even to a layman, the generic name should tell a bit of how important it is, even for human exploration of space.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I prefer "We have ignition...and liftoff of those economically taxing employees of ours from Cape Canaveral..."
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
- the earth is flat,
- the earth is the center of the universe,
- we all were created based on intelligent design,
- search for the creator,
- radiation is good for the creation,
- mercury can be converted into gold,
- spontaneous combustion of people does happen,
- ozone holes do not exist and affect only countries,
- global warming cannot happen?
Sorry for the exaggeration, but what most people in the US still do not realize is that NASA is not the only research institution facing mass layoffs. There is a broad program running to shut down research labs nationwide. At the same time tens of billions of dollars are shifted to religious extremists. It makes me feel sick when I see what is happening.The worst part of this, in my opinion, is that we don't even need human exploration. Right now the cheap and effective way to find things out about outer space is through robotics. No need for life support, no need to bring it back alive. And robotics will play a huge role in the future. Human exploration may be useful a few hundred years from now, but not yet.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Perhaps we'd all be better off if Eran got laid off, or at least got laid!-))
Next week there will be a Congressional panel investigating the lack of US students going into engineering and the sciences. We will get to watch our nation's "leaders" scratch their asses and wonder aloud how this ever happened.
Bets?
We have gotten almost nothing but a few pretty pictures out of NASA in the last thirty years, at a price tag of hundreds of billions.
Let's let the market put these engineers to work doing something useful.
And don't give me the "NASA invented X,Y,Z" crap. If that was our goal, we could give 1/10th of NASA's money to NSF, which unlike NASA, isn't spending the majority of its money on $600 hammers, and the majority of its research money on projects that have little direct impact on the average citizen.
Heaven forbid a citizen question their government.
Uh, but this is JPL, the Jet Propulstion Lab. What does that have to do with space?
The fact is that JPL has already left behind its jet propulsion roots to become a NASA contractor for robotic space exploration, presumably because that is where the money was when the jet propulsion money dried up. So now they are simply following the money again, this time to the DoD.
It would be cool to apply their unmanned robot experience to military unmanned air, sea, and ground vehicles, with potential for commerical spinoffs.
Let's call it the Cheap Space Access Subsidy Act. We don't need a space elevator or some new technology to get cheap access to space. Sure, these technologies would be a boon but we don't need to get the government involved in their construction, and if we do we probably end up paying 100x as much for it. The only level of involvement that government needs to play in bootstrapping access to space is a subsidy. Sam Dinkin proposes a ten-year, $150-billion federal subsidy. With upcoming American commercial launchers like the Falcon V expected to offer service at $2,600/kg, a $1,500/kg subsidy would at least double the amount of stuff being launched into space up to a limit of ten million kilograms a year. After ten years the industry that has sprung up to offer services to people who want to claim the subsidy will have so much momentum they won't need the subsidy to halve the cost of their service. Ten years after that and we'll see the costs halve again, and so on. Something like a space elevator will become commercially viable when it's the only way to undercut the competition.
Now all we have to do is get some congress criters to endorse it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I didn't read the article, but this is nonsensical. What happened to multitasking?
Why can't they keep small evolving groups that develop disparate but complementary principles?
Robotics will clearly accomplish more in the short run because space travel has deleterious effects on humans that we cannot yet counter effectively. Are we acceding that we will be sending astronauts to their deaths on long term missions? Or are we gonna wait another couple of fucking generations for the singularity to solve everything? This is a fucking joke.
un burrito me trampeó.
JPL was featured in Time this november as an example of "good management." in fact the whole catchphrase was that the businesses can learn something from the managers there, etc. It's awfully bad timing for such a layoff, I'd think.
unfortunately the said issue is subscriber only... so pick up a copy and enjoy the delectable irony.
Why would any young person go into science or technology if this is the way they treat people?
For a lot of students of science (myself included--physics here), it's not about fame, money, bitches, or a steady job. It's about knowledge and about increasing humans' understanding of the universe around us by standing on the shoulders of the giants of science who came before us.
Science will never make me money. There are about a dozen rich physicists in the world. I don't expect to become one of them. I've always told people that I'd rather live a refrigerator box whilst understanding the quantum mechanical structure of the energy which makes up its cardboard than have a "real" job that makes me a six figure salary while forcing me to work in a cubicle, never thinking for myself and always filing my TPS reports on time with cover sheets. Screw that. I'll take intimate knowledge of the fabric of spacetime over that any day, job or no.
Sure, it's too bad JPL is laying people off. I'm always sorry to see the sciences hurt, especially whilst watching the United States spend money I think could be invested more wisely in its future, but to answer your question, if you're getting into science because you think it'll make you money or because you expect it to provide you a steady job, please move on to something else. We need passion for knowledge, not for stable income.
After all, nobody really cares about how you call spaceship pilots.
The dinosaurs are extinct because they did not have a space program. Yes, robotic space exploration is cool, but we can never lose sight of manned exploration.
I'm a software engineer at JPL and I just thought I'd give my two cents worth. Layoffs are never a good thing, but it's not as though this is the first time either. There are always upturns and downturns. There is a lot of talk about congressional budget cuts, which is obviously the source of despair.
I'm not saying it's the *only* reason, but the president's emphasis on manned missions does certainly have an impact on JPL operations. JPL, as many of you know, specializes in delivering science data to interested parties. The majority of this data comes from unmanned missions (most of which were mentioned previously). The major emphasis from the government is now on retiring the shuttle and advancing to more sophisticated exploration vehicles. Recent snafus certainly haven't helped. I think in the end, however, things will come back around. New manned exploration almost certainly will not come about devoid of casualties. When human life becomes a concern again, I think views will change.
On the other hand, I've heard that some of the other NASA centers will be hit much harder. Considering JPL has almost 5500 employees (and the number of employees has been on the rise for awhile now), I personally think it could have been much worse.
Anyway, I don't claim to be the inside expert, just thought I'd share.
Did NASA promise 300 top notch engineers for the Google/NASA building?
Something to really think about. Don't deny that corruption is not prevalent in our country. Google is starting to remind me of that software company in the movie Antitrust.
There's more on this in Nasawatch's Personnel News Archive.
How 'bout someone gather up all of the commercial interests and start the A.A.S.C (American Aeronautics and Space Co-operation) and give NASA a bit of internal competition.
Maybe then they would be a bit more careful with their resources!
p.s. Is there such a thing as a non-government space agency(yet)?
Simple solution WE ALL MUST PAY MORE TAXES. For everything the government does. Higher income taxes to pay the debt off and the JPL guys!!!
In their upcoming job interview they can say, "Dude, I'm a freakin' rocket scientist!". I always wanted to say that...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Even more important: Anyone know, how many ppl have to work two frickin jobs (or 3-4 for a family) to make ends meet? great social insecurity you have, guys...though i'm afraid something similar will be coming to a gov't near me in the next four years...
;-/
greetings from germany
I say take the oil and let the people rot. But I'm sort of Machiavellian in my ways.
Terrorists: $100B damage, 3000 dead
Bush administration: $300B damage, 2000 dead, 15000 maimed (and counting, but not couting Iraqis)
Nice job. So glad we got the grown-ups in there.
they are not involved
Engineering was once considered a very stable profession -- like medicine, law, accounting, etc. Parents encouraged their children to become engineers, so they wouldn't suffer the ups and downs of blue collar or creative work.
Well now the tide has turned. Engineers may be subject to the worst ups and downs of all. High tech industry has always been boom/bust. But now engineering jobs are so specialized that the chance of finding another for which one is "qualified" is slim. And because of the nature of the work -- requiring huge capital investment -- the typical engineer cannot just "go out on his own," as can the typical tradesman.
Not only that, I bet the average mid-career electrician or plumber makes a more than the average mid-career engineer.
I also think the social contract has changed. It used to be that a stable job was a reward for studying hard, and a willingness to attack hard problems. Now people trade job security for a job that's more interesting than average. If you're willing to be bored to tears, you can still make a killing in real estate! Good with numbers? How about mortgage banking? Or $99k a year to manage the In-and-Out Burger down the street from JPL? (It's true!)
If you're going to put up with a career that takes forever to get going, with lousy job security, you might as well go into the arts or entertainment. At least you'll have a fighting chance to get laid!
Wow! That's great news. I ran several fetches and all of the categories show that life is completely rosy.
</Sarcasm>
Seriously, it is a great form and the system behind it works like a champ. Thank you for the link.
I still don't believe the numbers.
Shuttle crashed, 300 pieces missing. NASA refeses to comment on any link between the layoffs and the missing pieces from the launched shuttle.
Google hires 300 new engineers at its new Nasa Compound Campus
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
It's a shame that the group of people responsible for truly ground breaking work, gets the ax first. JPL is a household name for the amazing robots they built. And they're the ones who get canned when there's a shift in priorities. No wonder the space shuttle keeps blowing up with management like this.
failure -> rewarded with more funding
success -> punished with being shut down
But we should qualify that you hate religion, rather than give you some kind of moral high ground. You're just as valid/invalid as the advocates of religious states.
Basically, in Europe:
unemployed = No income
You mean "No Job, Collecting unemployment" I believe.
In Europe:
Small check but you survive because of cheap rent, cheap food & cheap medical care.
In the U.S.:
Unemployment = not enough money for rent, food and expensive medical care ($12000 for a family of 4!). Get a job at Starbucks for $8/hour and shut the fuck up. Oh, and you're outta here by the end of the month.
You shouldn't be at risk for starving because of unfortunate luck.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Mars, bitches
Forget about Iraq, its Mars bitches!
All of them! Every American works in a salt mine for sixteen hours a day! Then goes and drives a cab for ten hours! Then does piece-work in a sweatshop for another six hours! Every day! That's right, jamming 32 hours of work into one day. So at the end of the month, this average American may have earned enough to buy a turnip to feed his family for the next month! Maybe! If the mustachioed villain in the expensive suit at the bank doesn't foreclose on his house!
.
.
.
Buy yourself a clue, jackass. Maybe you can get your government to pay for it.
Plenty of moderators are wasting their mod points dishing out (trolls) instead of (insightful) because the truth hurts. Bush spent the money on the Iraq war, and now China is working on surpassing the US in space development within the next ten years.
I still don't get this. Reward failure (KSC, JSC) and punish success (JPL). Talk about screwed up.
That the "reason" for JPL's cuts are two essential, enabling missions for future efforts is beyond the pale. They are cutting the present and forfeiting the future. This is an egregious extension of NASA's behavior in the 1990s and early 00s - cuts across the board to fund overruns in Station/Shuttle. The irony being the lack of performance in those systems.
The telecom orbiter was important, so were the nuke engines. What a shortsighted mistake.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Yes, the money could be better spent elsewhere. So what? It could also go to feed starving people in Africa. If you drive a car, you could take the bus instead and use the car lease + insurance money to care for a child in some unfortunate circumstance. But I guess feeding starving children isn't high on your priorities. Bush has his priorities straight; they are just different than yours. Want to do something about it? Complaining about it on "teh intarweb" is worse than doing nothing.
And yet, even the neighboring facist Islamic countries managed fewer abuses than the secular state under Saddam. Sickening.
So you have a problem with Islamic democracies, then?
And here I thought we were trying to allow them to choose their own type of government... Silly me.
You can believe what you want, but you're still wrong.Again, you can believe whatever you want, but it was the reason given for the war. You might want to re-read Rice's little bed time story about a "mushroom cloud".
Play revisionist all you want, but their statements are on record.No he did not. We pulled them out and then he refused to let them back in.
Again, play revisionist all you want, but the facts are a matter of record.
Now, which of those UN resolutions was worth a single US death? Why?
Which of them are worth the hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending? Why?
Well JPL is in Pasadena, but Ames is hit too and it's of course in Mountain View next to Google...
If we believe the nasawatch site, it seems that this RIF might be structured as a buyout (the carrot), with a later layoff (the stick). Although ususally intended to convince the high-priced old-timers to leave (to avoid the inevitable layoff), this strategy often has the unintended consequence of scaring the good people who can find better situations into taking the money and finding a better situation.
So yes, I think there's a good chance that quite a few people among those leaving were among the best and the brightest, since they are the ones with the best prospects at finding a new position and might be brave enough to take the money and take a chance at google (if they want them).
I care what was there when we invaded. That is what we're spending these troops' lives on (not to mention the money).No. Iraq had ZERO nuclear capability. You've swallowed too much of propaganda.Again, Iraq did not have any nuclear capability. So your argument fails.And for the last time, Iraq had ZERO nuclear capability.
I actually wish all government expenses were openly documented for the scrutiny of tax paying citizens.
The next step (or maybe the first) would be organizing the average joe and jane into lobbying congress for their benefits. I'm not interested in mob rule, but I also have a hunch that special interests are currently ruling, and unfairly so.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
note: Please refrain from making such broad statements when talking about Europe.
It's probably difficult to grasp from the exterior, but things like what you're taking about are totally different in each countries.
Basically everything is different except the few things which have been laid out by the EU government, which is really not much. (We didn't even agree on things like "you must not kill" yet since the european treaty was rejected...).
The number you speak about could have been given by a EU official comitee and not by an individual country, but it wouldn't change the fact that it would have been built by asking each country its own unemployment rate, which is probably not calculated in the same way at all in each countries.
You stupid fuck, $6BILLION a month on Iraq when there isn't enough to rebuild New Orleans, an AMERICAN CITY, isn't anyone's priority except Bush. Or really Cheney, who's got one hand up Bush's sockpuppet ass, and the other still scraping cash from Halliburton. Which is getting paid in Iraq AND in New Orleans. Unless you're posting from Iraq (and none of you Anonymous Republican Coward Bush apologists ever are), shut the fuck up when you're talking about our money and our priorities.
--
make install -not war
Yes, you heard that right: I am an engineer. Not a a "software engineer", not a "data engineer", not a "financial engineer". (Not to disparage the contributions of those people, just saying that they stretch the use of the term.) I'm the kind of engineer NASA hires: a mechanical engineer. If you want, I can send you a scan of my diploma and my work badge, and a link to my registered EIT number. I'm basically advocating a position that if implemented could flood the engineer market and cut my salary.
... you know, the official justification for all government funding.
NASA does do a lot of cool things, to be sure. But really, if consumers wanted any of this fancy stuff, if it were remotely cost-justified, someone would do it anyway. As such, they just fund advanced research with unfortunately little return to the public. And before you give me a laundry list of the things NASA produced, understand the difference between "what NASA did was good" and "what NASA did was better than what could otherwise have been done". To fund NASA, you have to draw money from and reduce profitability for private entrepreneurs who are hunting for ways to satisfy human desires. We all hear about what NASA did. We can never hear about what would have happened in the absence of NASA. So NASA developed such-and-such? Too bad it came at the cost of the market producing better such-and-such.
I mean, it's great that NASA pumps up my salary even though I don't work there by tightening up the engineer market, just as it's great for humanities professors that government funding pumps up the their salaries by paying for their research. That doesn't mean it benefits the general public
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
It's rather unfortunate that in the United States advertising seems to be increasing in profile as an industry (see how the companies mentioned the most on Slashdot make most of their revenue), while actual development of useful (or at least interesting and insightful) products keeps getting outsourced. Something really needs to be done. [don't ask me what..]
And it's hilarious and sad the way investors actually chastise the Costco CEO for paying his employees "too much". That attitude will be the downfall of the US.
Free Hans!
Is Larry Wall among the ones who were laid off?
:D
i worked at the jpl. i was on a research project involving space-based network protocols. funding for which was dropped two years ago. going after DoD contracts has been happing at the jpl for many years now. yeah, there are a lot of managers who are scrambling for money from anywhere. but there is also a clear shift in nasa's mission away from space research and towards the militarization of space. i can buy the story that the low-level managers are just desperate and looking for money with blinders on inocently enough. but i can't excuse nasa's leaders, or those who set policy at the high-levels. it's intentional.
I'd rather spend less on military expenditures and less on "manned" exploration and more on robotic missions. We're passing up the chance to do some really great things in the solar system at a fraction of the cost of "manned" missions. We could be sending probes to search for possible life on Europa, but instead we're shooting for the moon, and believe me, the chances of the USA of ever getting back to the moon is nil. After Bush leaves office, returning to the moon will be seen as just another failed Bush policy and it will be tossed in the dustbin. Unfortunately, by that time, there won't be any political or intestinal fortitude left to attempt an ambitious robotic mission. Remember when you were in grade school and the hyperactive science teacher would play up how "your generation" would live and work in space? I guess they were wrong.
And I'm going to make the problem even worse by bidding you all farewell.
Good from what I see of your postings mister Anonymous Coward slashdot will be better off without you.
Engineers are outnumbered about 10 to 1 (I kid you not) at most JPL project meetings by managers. I once had a friend of mine (who was the only person doing any actual design work on the project) get so pissed off because he was the only engineer (and the only one doing any real work on that part of the project) in a meeting full of managers complaining about him not working fast enough, that he told them to get off their lazy asses and do some of the work themselves. He wasn't fired because not one of the managers could do anything useful. JPL used to be a great place to work twenty or thirty years ago, but now all the bullshit bureaucracy just causes frustration and ulcers. Personally, I think the place would be a lot more fun to work at if it were smaller like it used to be, because projects were truly team efforts that people cared about before the place was inundated with blundering ignorant managers that don't do a damn thing except get in the way and complain. A few years ago, top level management spend thousands of dollars on a report that was no more than a pretty picture of the visible light spectrum. Their "report" was so ludicrous it even made it into one of the Dilbert cartoons - and believe me, a lot of JPLers were submitting a lot of material to Scott Adams because there was so much inane BS going on at JPL at that time ("Faster, Better, Cheaper" was one classic example which led to three failed spacecraft missions to Mars). JPL always seems to have some damn new management fad they try to force on the engineers and scientists, and the management fads are constantly changing.
There are still a few good people there, and one of them was in charge of MER. I think that's primarily why it was a success, but don't look for many more successful projects out of JPL until they dump a few hundred bureaucrats.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Didn't we just have an article about the decline of the US in sciences and engineering? Tell me again how it will all be better if we just somehow get more people to study those subjects in school. It's jobs, man. Show me long-term stable growth in science and engineering jobs and I'll show you plenty of students willing to take on the challenges.
The robotic missions are generally substantially less expensive. The problem with manned missions is the amount of expense that goes into keeping the people alive. The people themselves are massive, and the life support systems still more massive, and the redundant systems still more massive. All that mass adds up to $$$, especially since things have to be higher reliability because it looks *really* bad when people die in space, but when all you've lost is some metal and electronics people don't get as upset.
It's much cheaper to use robots, even if you build two on the expectation that you'll lose one.
Wonder how many NASA unemployees are going to turn up working for China's government. With a manned spaceflight frequency second only to Russia, you'd think China was the place to be for the implementors of space technology. Still think these mass layoffs are part of a plan to buy most of NASA's needs from other countries and manage other space programs from a distance rather than be in the business of building spaceships.
I'm sure we gained something from manned missions, like the moon missions which gave us a truly global perspective and a few hundred kilograms of basalt and dust. But nothing on the scale of Mars Pathfinder (amazing geology studies), Mars Express (found water on Mars, high resolution 3D topography), the Spirit and Opportunity rovers still going strong on a shoe string budget, Cassini's new discoveries around Saturn, Hubble's burst of cosmology studies unparalleled in human history, and the SOHO space craft watching our sun. Not to mention Voyagers' incredible 30 year journey through our solar system which is still giving us science on the termination shock at the boundary of our solar system, again on the tiniest of budgets. We have the opportunity to go on a trip to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt starting in January and the Europeans are likely to launch the Venus Express soon which will do for Venus what the Mars Express has done and give us valuable insight into the worst case of runaway greenhouse effect in the solar system.
What have manned space missions done? Not a great deal. This is the most boneheaded decision from an administration renowned for some truly stunning clunkers.
Andrew van der Stock
time for the human race to enter the solar system.
Now is there any stupid out here whose gonna blame this layoff too on outsourcing!!!
Why does yahoo do this
It's "intelligent design". Expect more of this kind of stuff to occur as those who say that scientists are the high priests of neo-paganism are taken more seriously.
The attitude in Japan is different: when a company gets into troubles the management at the very top takes responsibility and takes a pay cut. Often quietly so not to disturb the morale.
There are many puns to be made here, I willl leave them to you.
Less money for the employees == more profit for the company. Why the investors wouldn't want that? If I'm going to invest in a company, I want them to do everything they can to make me some money.
You'll think differently once you settle down, buy a house, and get married. Either that, or you just posted the main reason why genius is not an evolutionary survival trait....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
See, here's how it works. I call this "executive syndrome" in a more specific form, but generally speaking, people consider anything they can't do beneath them.
Since geeks (by and large) can't fight, they look at violent expression as somehow being lower than reason, even though realistically it isn't. Actually, violence is a hell of a lot more effective.
Kind of a sorry truth, I guess, but everyone needs to face up to it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The Costco CEO insists on paying his workers a decent wage (something like 15-16 dollars/hour to start with) plus health benefits
Personally I would rather he just pay them 8 bucks an hour (a decent wage for what they do) and pass the savings on to me.
corporatre profits! SUVs! Global Warming! JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!! WHAT WILL YOU DO?
FWIW I saw something about this a week or two ago on nasa tv (I think it was "realplay http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram" but maybe some other stream). The director was presenting the plan for shuttle replacement and personnel reduction. It sounded like they were going to try to use put personnel in other projects and not fire people. I also saw video animation of the upcoming shuttle replacement and it was extremely cool, including an apparent change in thinking to making less expensive but more useful modules based mainly on current shuttle technology, and which would be 10 times safer than shuttle.
I just opened that stream up again now and it is extremely awesome. I'm watching ISS and ground control. Woman (Bill MacArthur space communicator and friend/past mission participant Pam Melroy) in ground control talking to ISS says, "Or is it just the Diet Coke of evil?". Time now 12:11:46 am JST or 15:16:46 UTC. Watch it!
Not "collecting unemployment".
They're not automatically the same. In practice there is a link though, since many people will no longer continue to register with the unemployment office when there is no cash in it for them. If they do so (perhaps to avail themselves of job search tools there), they are counted.
But this is a slippery slope here. For example, when you ask the "real level of unemployment", I could say something like 40-50%.
Why? There are plenty of employable people who aren't employed. Like stay at home moms, teens who don't want jobs, college students who don't want jobs and just flat out rich people who don't want jobs either.
This isn't to say that the US numbers haven't been rigged to reduce the magnitude. It has been done at least twice in my lifetime, that I know of. For example, Reagan get the formula changed to count military as employed (instead of uncounted). Also, seasonally unemployed people (teachers, migrant farm workers) are not counted either.
Anyway, in summary, saying simply "what are the real numbers?" kind of sells the question short, implying that the current answer is specious and that there is a simple way to come to an accurate result.
I feel our US numbers are accurate and can be used on their own as a good measure of employment rates. So, to me, they are the "real numbers".
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Personally I would rather he just pay them 8 bucks an hour (a decent wage for what they do) and pass the savings on to me.
Much as Wal*Mart and Costco and Target like to advertise low prices- passing the savings on to the consumer is not an option in retail. The choices are to pay this money to the workers or to the stockholders- that's the choice.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Is there actually some kind of retarded rivalry between "engineers" and "scientists" in industry? As if the two disciplines don't criss-cross and overlap each other in 80 million different ways?
This seems like a gigantic waste of time and potential collaboration.
+++ATH0