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."

Comments

Wish I had a violin...

[dada21]

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?

Not a $600 screwdriver problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Write your Congressman TODAY!

[fbg111]

Thanks for weighing in, always nice to hear from someone with real experience in the topic.

Quick question - for those of us on the outside it appears that we get much more value out of our robotic missions than the manned ones, from various interplanetary probes to the Mars landers. They're relatively cheap, successful, can be done relatively quickly (compared to 20 years for Mars) and return a wealth of fascinating knowledge. What do people at JPL, and NASA in general think of manned Mars missions? Is there consensus that we should do it, even at the great expense, or is there internal debate about it? Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't devote NASA's resources to producing more efficient propulsion systems for Mars and other manned interplanetary missions, instead of attempting such missions with with current propulsion technology.

Re:Yeah right

[Keebler71]

What cuts? Look like the budget is increasing 2% each of the next several years or so.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/107493main_FY_06_budget_su mm.pdf

Looking back to the 50's, in real dollars NASA's budget has been increasing pretty much throughout except for from 66-71 or so. I could really throw my karma to the wind and point out that the budget under Bush jr has increased consistently in both then and 1996-constant dollars, and that it appears Clinton and Nixon seem to be the only two presidents who presided over a continuous decrease in NASA budget (constant 1996 dollars).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

Of course, the article is about cuts at JPL and I am talking about NASA's budget... but I feel perfectly comfortable with a slight redirect like that given that the majority of posts (and most space-related threads on slashdot) schitzophrenically vacillate between "we need more money for human space exploration" and "human exploration budget is raiding scientific space research".