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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
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.
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?
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.
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
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!
Wonders if you check that little box that says give money to NASA... Wonders if you give your tax return back to the government... Wonders if you write your congressman... Wonders if you've ever had a original thought in your life... Just shoot yourself now and put yourself out of my misery.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
What in the hell are you talking about! Google exploring space.... All praise google, saviour of the universe... Bite me.
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.
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.....
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~
I believe money can be much better spent on robotic exploration rather than on manned missions. I also think the return on investment in terms of new technology is going to be better per money spent (although manned expeditions cost much more).
Of the 12 astronauts that walked on the Moon, only one was a geologist. I'm afraid this will happen again on the Moon and on Mars, if (and it's a big if) the US administrations will have sufficient will and attention span to make astronauts get there at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Generally, propellant is pretty inexpensive for launch vehicles, when compared to other systems and expenses.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
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.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
It's really hard to know when to bash the President. You do it before he makes a bad decision and you're a bad American. You do it after he does it and you're a bad American. You do it sometimes inbetween and people tell you to stop drinking Kool-Aid. I'm okay with taxing the poor too. As it is they don't get punished enough. I think we'll need to work harder on getting rid of public radio (liberal heaven) from all the rural areas. Who cares if it's their only source of news they should modernize and move to the city or something. Lets definately not support spending money on them or ignore them altogether. They're dirty people. We should just not fix their levee. Fixing a levee would be proactive and costly. Here's one scary moment we all know about: The asian bird flu. I'm glad we're not doing anything about it but it's better to fight the unknown that... well I'll let one of the big guys tell it: As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know. -- Donald Rumsfeld I have no idea what that means but I know it's best that we fight them terrorists as hard as we can and forget the known non-terrorist problems. It's the unknown you should be scared about! We'll fight it by fixing social security. Oh, before I end this thread it's true that I haven't been in the President's place. I have tried to hire my friends to FEMA or the highest court in the land. I haven't sent good Americans to die for nation building even though I thought I said I wouldn't do that. So don't mind me. I have no clue. Thank you for letting me rant.
bah. start over
You get to choose what "science" you do. Why not do lunar or asteroid surveying? Using the result of this science to mine is precisely the kind of thing corporations would pay to do. This make the fundamental science valuable and getting industry grants or charging for access to the detailed results of this science is a lot easier all of a sudden.
How we know is more important than what we know.
straw man... sorry, you lose. Come back when you choose logic.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Oh my god, I can't believe it was formatted in HTML. I feel like a complete liberal. It's a good thing I can't seem to edit the post.
bah. start over
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!
Funny, I've never seen that little checkbox in my tax software. I'll look for it next time, though. I did not want that tax cut that I got a few years ago, thanks. I help feed homeless people with a lot of my tax return rather than putting more money towards a war that I didn't think needed to be fought in the first place, thanks. I think the USA on its present path is falling apart. I'm sorry you don't see it that way. I do write my congresspeople, thanks. They just don't seem to listen. On a rare occasion I get the auto-gen'd written reply (real paper snail mail!) that tells me there is at least one computer on the other end that is directing my emails to a place other than /dev/null. You must watch Fox "News" a lot. Have a nice weekend :-)
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
WOW
I pity people like you.....all W has to do is manage to stumble out the word "threat" and you go charging off without asking any questions...How much money did we just waste in NY over one of your threats?
I thought the RepubliCONS thought that we needed to do away with the "Nanny State". You whine "Oh please, please protect me from Saddam's WMDs". In return I promise not to notice that you didn't find any.
Also Mr. Neanderthal, what about the REAL women you've managed to get killed in Iraq?
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.
hey hey now, I'm "doing" all I can not to get pulled into a war I don't agree with that was based on lies. a war where the only reason we are given for spending 6 billion a month is that we fucked up and so we have to keep spending it. It doesn't matter if I'm not the president. it's the same way that it doesn't matter if I'm not a doctor. if a doctor messes up and costs me my arm, I take him for what my arm is worth.
Bush fucks up and costs me programs I love, I get pissed at him to for not being able to do his job correctly.
The hurricane clean up, just like the war, are choices we are making. nothing has to be paid by the federal government. They are not required to fund the clean up of a city when the city didn't do things correctly. both are choices. Just like increasing taxes on those most capable of paying them and still live reasonably confortably is a choice. they are all choices so don't get all uppity when my priorities don't match yours.
what I complain about is a president who puts covering his own ass with bad excuses about Iraq above real science(no, under no circumstances is intelligent design real science).
I would say the only thing worse than using hindsight to critique others is to not critique them at all when you see that a glaring mistake was made that costs billions and our friends' lives every day. so I'm not sure what these real men are going out and doing if you are talking about our president, because I see a lot of excuses, ignorant comments, hiding from the truth, and using a position to help your friends first and do your job second. I could do that easily, all I need to lack is a conscience.
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
You're just as valid/invalid as the advocates of religious states.
No, he's not. A theocracy bases its laws on the (always quite baseless) religious texts of its rulers and will oppress those of other/no faith. A secular government is (theoretically) based on what is rationally best for its citizens.
Mars, bitches
Forget about Iraq, its Mars bitches!
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.
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
The Republican government lays yet another blow on science in America. As if Bush coming out and saying he supports Intelligent Design
I love it when he shows his human side...always wanting what he doesn't have.
Wow, nice assumptions on all of you guys parts. For reference, I apologize that I forgot to mention the Women who have corageously and valliantly served their country... and, unfortunately DIED for thier country. I never asked anyone to go and join the military, it's strictly a voluntary force. And I applaud those who join. Also, I may or may not approve of Liberating Iraq. However, the fact remains that we are in there, what will be accomplished by withdrawing? Save money? Ok, yea it will do that. Allow a country to fall into anarchy? Sure, lets do that. Lets make it look like we can't clean up our messes. Lets also make it seem that we have no will to stand up to armed thugs. Hand a bullhorn to these lunatics so that they can say "look, we drove them out of Iraq! Let's go invade and make them surrender! It's easy, we only have to fight them for a year!" Just because someone says that we shouldn't back down doesn't mean they support the president blindly. Do you realize, dubbya (as you call him) has spent more on programs to assist the poor, raise education standards, try (poorly) to make health care more affordable? I dont' think Iraq was a good place to make this stand. But ya know what, we stepped in to this pile of shit, and now we gotta clean it up. That is unless you advocate running and hiding; turning away from a difficult situation cause we can't do it; making the US less secure; turning the middle east over to Radical Islamic Militants who's entire ethos consists of 1.) Getting rid of Israel 2.) Killing any american, anywhere they can find them.
Don't talk about what has happend; yes, we fucked up many things. But by God have an IDEA of what you advocate and the consequences. Do you really believe that by saying, "OK, ya'll really mean that ya'll don't want us here, our mistake. We'll just go back to the US and leave ya'll alone." will garner us any more support with the Radical Islamic Militants? Do you think it will help us in the world political scheme? What part of the "We made a mess, fucked up a country, and we're just gonna leave now." doctrine will help the US AT ALL?
By the way, if these 300 engineers are worth their degree and P.E. License (if they have one) they will have NO PROBLEM finding work. It just won't be with the government. I feel for them. It took me 6 months to find a job with my degree in computer engineering. Just because you're an engineer doen't garrunte you'll never be fired. It just means they will have to compete in a non-government arena now. They will be fine.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
***And yet, even the neighboring facist Islamic countries managed fewer abuses than the secular
state under Saddam. Sickening.
What goes unseen goes unknown, ie. you have no idea the total sum of abuses in a nation
with state controlled media .
Most ppl do not know what it is like to be a outspoken person in a third world theocracy,
but this person who was merely taking pictures found out :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahra_Kazemi
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
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.
There's some serious problems with the way space probes are made. First, the "uniqueness" of the systems works against them. There's little reusability between space probes even when the "cheaper, faster, better" thing was going through. This naturally drives up the price and extends the design and productive parts of the life cycle of a project.
Second, these projects take way too long in a political environment that can change annually and certainly will change every presidential election cycle. For example, we're apparently planning missions out to 2020 and beyond. Any project with a duration that long has to survive multiple shifts in national space exploration policy. Frankly, you need projects that can go from start to finish in around four years or less so that they can operate under a single presidential term and minimize the political risk.
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
Also the whole point of subsiding research is to stimulate non-trivial, long term projects that corporations would not do by themselves. Cheap solutions and short term projects won't advance the technology and science that much.
time for the human race to enter the solar system.
By that definition I don't think a secular government exists. Western democracies are really quite Christian in their laws; Separation of church and state only means separation of leadership structures, not of beliefs. I think all that really matters is that the nations are tolerant.
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.
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.
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
I guess my point is that government suffers from the same short-sightedness that is currently affecting business. Long term space projects seems better grounds for some sort of non-profit. There are numerous examples (including virtually all universities).
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
LOL....
Have you recently asked what an iraqi wants? Would you rather have a job and keep your mouth shut or would you rather have no job, no money and still have no ability to publicly speak about something. Thats the sad part about Iraq now. Under Saddams rule, as disgusting as it may be, people still were able to function in one way or another. Saddam's regime before the sanctions and before the gulf war and before the Iran war was the most open regime in the Gulf. Lets not forget that Iraq was the only Gulf country to have Jews(notice how they never ran away to israel until now), Christians(iraqi christians, not the Assyrians who in most cases do not consider themselves iraqi), and moslems being recognized as iraqis. Now lets see how the picture looks: Iraq is a moslem state, and Shiaa for that matter. For fucks sake...if i was Iraqi, i would rather live under saddams rule...But in any case, we shouldnt speak for the iraqis. Its their country....too bad no one ever asked them if they wanted this war...
Thats just my two cents worth...bash me as much as you want...