Mr Viral
NASA senior staff are being offered the opportunity to leave voluntarily before the axes start swinging, and it seems likely that thousands will take the escape hatch.
The US space agency is facing massive funding cuts that would put it back to pre-Apollo levels of budgets and staffing. A report in Politico based on internal documents says over 2,000 senior staff are planning to leave under the deferred resignation program (DRP), but people within the organization have said that there’s no official count on the cuts and won’t be until the end of the month.
“There is no set target number for the DRP. This program is a voluntary opportunity available to NASA employees,” a spokesperson told The Register.
“NASA remains committed to our mission as we work within a more prioritized budget. We are working closely with the Administration to ensure that America continues to lead the way in space exploration, advancing progress on key goals including the Moon and Mars.”
Sources with knowledge of the situation tell us that staff have until July 25 to decide if they are taking DRP, and that the documents detailing the layoffs aren’t official agency projections. But the feeling from contacts in the agency is that morale is at a low point, and some staffers are feeling it’s better to jump with a golden parachute than be pushed out.
The current budget proposal would slash funding for Earth satellite missions and Solar System exploration, but still allocate over $4 billion for the non-reusable Space Launch System to get humans back on the Moon and, bizarrely, $85 million to shift a defunct space shuttle to Texas.
Certainly the agency is in turmoil, and the appointment of a former reality TV performer and congresscritter Sean Duffy as acting administrator may not provide much reassurance. In addition, there’s a virtual hiring freeze for new recruits, which will cripple the ability of the younger generation to learn from older staff – skills that will be needed if NASA is to complete its lofty landing goals.
“NASA is directed to do probably the two most difficult and ambitious projects that one can do in human spaceflight, which is to send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars,” according to Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for non-profit advocacy group The Planetary Society. “So they’re saying, do these two insanely difficult things with a workforce that’s the equivalent to that before the first humans even went into space,” he told The Register.
Dreier pointed out that the proposals as they stand would leave NASA with a fiscal budget at 1961 levels and staffing numbers the same as 1960 – an era before the agency orbited its first astronaut under Project Mercury and before the Project Gemini two-man missions even took off.
One Big Brutal Bill: Ex-NASA brass decry Trump’s proposed budget cuts
US lawmakers fire back a response to Trump’s NASA cuts
NASA boss-to-be gets spaced as proposed budget cuts detailed
Former reality TV star appointed NASA interim administrator
Under the circumstances, he opined, the best and the brightest will move from NASA to the commercial sector where they can make more money and have better job security. Private companies working on advanced software for robotics and self-driving cars are in high demand, and it’s likely many first-class minds will take the money and run to greener pastures.
They’re attacking the future of NASA science activities with this proposed 47 percent budget cut
“There’s lots of valuable skills that apply to all sorts of things that are more lucrative financially, I think people with those skill sets will be going to be the ones to go,” Dreier commented. “They’re attacking the future of NASA science activities with this proposed 47 percent budget cut. And so a lot of people are probably saying ‘there’s no future for me.’
“It’s an institutional level of knowledge of how to fly a spacecraft beyond the edge of the Solar System, or to land on Mars. And if you disperse that people have bits and pieces of that knowledge, the institutional knowledge disappears.”
Congress is still arguing over the extent of the budget cuts for the space agency, and the funding cuts aren’t set in stone. But it’s clear that some top staffers aren’t going to take the chance and will be heading to a commercial career with a payout for doing so. ®
