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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."
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
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
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.
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
The cuts reflect the tremendous cost of warmongering around the world...
No, they just reflect a change of priorities.
Besides, it's hard to argue that the Iraq war affects NASA's budget when the NASA bugdet has been increasing pretty steadily under Bush and that Bush just passed a 6% funding increase in 2005 and a 2.4% funding increase in 2006.
The war budget and the NASA budget have no relationship with each other. Both are paid on deficit spending.
Why did this guy get a 'troll' score?? He's got a point!
Actually NASA's budget has not increased or decreased significantly, and while I'm not a fan of warmongering, I don't think that warmongering is getting in the way of NASA's budget, which is tiny in comparison. NASA is getting the same money but is shifting priorities around in order to retire the shuttle earlier. This is a good thing. People are being laid off at some NASA centers, and others are hiring.
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.
There's more on this in Nasawatch's Personnel News Archive.
I used to work for a company that did military contracts, (your proverbial $500 screwdriver) and I could tell you that in many cases they were selling them at a loss. The $500 screwdriver contract would read as follows:
You will need a certificate from the foundary certifing that it does not contain substance X or Y, and no more than ### ppm of element Z. This must be signed off by the chief metalurgist. Each screwdriver shall be x-rayed to ensure it contains no manufacturing defects.
At least one screwdriver from each lot must be tested to destruction, to ensure it has the required strength and does not emit any toxic fumes while being blown up or burned.
The screwdriver contract shall contain no less than 500 pages, detailing stuff like exactly what angles the fillets shall be on the handle, the minimum torque strength of the shaft, etc. These specification shall be revised no less than 3 times throughout the program, sending the manufacturer back to the drawing board on each occasion.
Each screwdriver shall be individually serial numbered, and come with a 50 page manual detailing proper screwdriver storage procedures, table listing 14 digit part numbers for all screws that can be adjusted with it, and detailed pictorials showing how the screwdriver shall be used.
The specifications for military semiconductors were so onerous that most part manufacturers simply gave up on it. I remember stuff like having to manually pull each bonding wire to test its strength, lengthy temerature soaks, etc. This led to the rise of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) manufacturing, which essentially modified commercial grade components for military use.
My rights don't need management.
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?
affects mostly "support" positions and contractors, not scientists. Translation: "the cafeteria will no longer be open until 5PM."
First, JPL is primarily an engineering organization, not a science one. About 5% of the technical people are titled as "scientists," though about 30% of the technical people have PhDs, and another ~30% masters degrees. And as much as it would offend many of both the scientists and engineers to hear it, many of the "scientists" do a lot of engineering, and many of the "engineers" do more than a little science. In some areas the people who do R&D (as opposed to routine design work) will get hit because their low level organizations don't value R&D (strange but true), even though the R&D people might have money and support from project offices. And even though they aren't actively laying off scientists, all NASA has to do is be slow about delivering on the grants (not new at all-- sometimes they deliver money a year or more late) and scientists are effectively laid off because they have no money. I know scientists who are just as worried as engineers about the situation. And who do you think designs hardware and cuts metal for most of the science work? Engineers and technicians.
The cuts include around 200 people in the engineering and science directorate, which is relatively lean on "support staff." Much of the support stuff was outsourced in the "5000 by 2000" under Dan Goldin (reduce the JPL staff to 5000 heads by the year 2000). The cafeteria used to be contractors and is now Caltech Food Service (but not JPL staff). The police force was outsourced. I think the firefighters are still staff. The desktop computing services was outsourced. I think the copy shops have been run by contractors since as far back as I remember.
About 100 of the 300 will come from outside the Engineering and Science directorate, which includes procurement and subcontracts, QA (people love to hate QA, but they do some pretty useful things, and there are people there who do real engineering, like qualifying electronic parts for space environments), business analysts and schedulers (people who track all the boring stuff for the engineers), proposal support (people who stay up all night to make the engineers' and scientists' proposals look good--a lot of money comes in via proposals), and there are probably more.
On top of this, something like 100-200 (or more, it's been kind of fuzzy) contractors who are resident on lab will also be dropped (effectively laid off), many of whom are doing engineering work that JPL couldn't otherwise get done (that's why they get brought in). Many of them are quite talented, and there aren't staff people who can do what they're doing, even though the work hasn't been cancelled, just the positions.
The weird thing is that normally layoffs occur when money is cut or projects are cancelled (and that generally makes sense), but this time people are being laid off while they have work, basically setting up a bunch of tasks for failure. A lot of people got laid off after the two Mars rovers delivered (I bet you didn't hear about that-- there were stacks of awards that didn't get delivered because the people who earned them had been laid off when they delivered and were no longer funded). This one just seems strange, and poorly thought out and poorly communicated-- the public statements don't add up in the context of how money and employment work at JPL.
Always be skeptical of the PR flaks, whether they're bringing good news or bad.