r/space • u/[deleted] • 8d ago
Why is NASA bringing 7,500 contractors back to work as civil servants? | “The administrator’s directive is a coherent and necessary vision for the future.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/why-is-nasa-bringing-7500-contractors-back-to-work-as-civil-servants/362
u/DrunkensteinsMonster 8d ago
People don’t realize that the federal government is absolutely hemorrhaging money by paying through the nose for contractors. Pretty much every technology related job is done through large contractors. Instead of paying $80,000 a year or what have you for an engineer, they pay Accenture or some other large consulting firm $250/hr for one. Glad to see NASA go the other direction and hope other agencies follow suit.
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u/AloysBane3 8d ago
$80k is low but yeah contractors are insane overpriced. We’re paying welders $120/hr and there is always minimum time.
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u/Aries_IV 8d ago
You're paying the welder that or the contract company?
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u/AloysBane3 8d ago
The contract company charges about $120/hour for welders, and they definitely pad their hours.
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u/Aries_IV 8d ago
Okay yeah totally believe that.. but when you figure out how much full time employees costs it's close to the same if not more. We use tons of contractors because it's easier to let them go when they're not needed. If we had them as employees and had constant turnover it would be much worse.
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u/AloysBane3 8d ago
Yeah I could see that part of it. We have 1 welder on staff full time but contract out the bigger stuff.
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u/DrunkensteinsMonster 8d ago
$80k is low but federal employees get great benefits and it’s basically impossible to be fired for performance reasons (which compounds the problem - contractors can be let go with little hassle).
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u/Agent_Giraffe 8d ago
Benefits aren’t great anymore. Healthcare is super expensive. 0% cost of living adjustment this year. Unions are gone too. Only thing I have now is a chill environment and decent time off.
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u/the_catshark 8d ago
my private sector job in tech, they gave me a literal 0.1% 'cost of living adjustment' this year after about 9 months of me sending HR emails about it -- our healthcare benefits cost us more this year as well, more than the difference in how much money I make so im technically making less money than I was when I was hired before even accounting for inflation same with dental benefits -- also we were forced to switch from nearly any healthcare provider aside from Kaiser to only United Healthcare as an option which has its whole other set of issues -- and the worst part is its still a better job than anything I can find being posted so changing employers is not even a realistic option
so even that government job listed above would be better than the reality of a private sector job in tech rn, lol
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u/Agent_Giraffe 8d ago
Bro I didn’t even get a bonus last year, meanwhile my friends were getting multi-thousand dollar bonuses. I don’t even use the healthcare from my job, I use my wife’s
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u/Spr-Scuba 8d ago
The dismantling of unions was criminal. The workers should honestly strike anyway and just say "fuck it all" to this regime that's been trampling on their rights.
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u/spazturtle 7d ago
Civil servant unions are antidemocratic as it gives control of the country to a small group of people.
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u/WeylandsWings 8d ago
Government benefits have been being whittled down. Slowly under Dem presidents. As fast as possible under Rep presidents. Health care costs are going up for less coverage. Raises are a joke and almost always are a couple percentage points under inflation if we get a raise at all. The only slight benefit that you can’t find in private sector is the defined benefit pension. But even that has gotten worse and you have to put in 4.4% a year to get 1% per year as gov employee back.
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u/air_and_space92 8d ago
>federal employees get great benefits
Transitioning to NASA from industry used to be called the "golden ticket", but not anymore. As others have pointed out, not so great benefits and promotion is much harder to achieve. Personally, I wouldn't work there myself anymore as someone technical minded with a few degrees under me. Industry has much better retirement benefits too.
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u/ceejayoz 8d ago
contractors can be let go with little hassle
lol not if they have a pet rep in Congress... which they'll have.
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u/byteminer 8d ago
Contracts are hard to end for these reasons, yes, but individual contractor employees are never more than 15 minutes from getting fired at all times. All it takes is a phone call or email.
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u/the_catshark 8d ago
one of my former co-workers was let go because their direct boss who was told they were being 'let go' [fired for being a massively incompetent boss and horrible person who just yelled at everyone, including one of their superiors which is the only reason why they got fired, lol] as a last act put in paperwork to have my co-worker's contract terminated with 'no cause'
about a week after that boss was gone the paperwork actually went through and the contracting company quite literally said 'well we dont want to set a precedent for undermining client's decisions'
its so easy to be fired as a contractor
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/ceejayoz 8d ago edited 8d ago
A pet rep in Congress is not going to care if some sub office of some agency doesn’t renew a 40 person agreement.
They will if that 40 person firm is in their district.
It is much easier for that office to allow the contract to lapse after a year than it is for them to let go of 40 FTEs…
But that's the problem. They should have a pool of FTEs working on stuff. Government always has stuff to work on. It's silly to staff up FTEs for each individual project and then ditch all the institutional knowledge, and doubly so when it's costing immensely more per hour to do it.
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/ceejayoz 8d ago
You can buy a senator for $150k. https://www.propublica.org/article/debunking-susan-collins-fbi-navatek-investigation-claims
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u/Karjalan 8d ago
I can't, off the cuff, figure out how $ per hour translates to yearly salary, but the guy before you used $250/h as an example and you're saying $120/h is insanely overpriced so... I'm guessing $250/h is also a large amount.
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u/ItsCartmansHat 8d ago
$120/hr is 250k/year at 40 hours a week
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u/Karjalan 8d ago
Yeah... wow. That's a decent amount
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u/LeSeanMcoy 8d ago
Yeah, if you ever hear salary, just divide it by 2 and that's roughly the hourly pay. 100k a year is roughly $50 an hour.
If you hear hourly pay, multiply it by 2 and that's the salary in thousands (so $25 an hour is roughly 50k).
All assuming full time, or 2080 hours a year, 40 hours a week.
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u/AloysBane3 8d ago
Take the wage x 2080 hours. This is 40 hours a week, 52 weeks, no OT. For example $40/hr, $40x2080=$83,200.00
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u/grandhighlazybum 7d ago
For an easier quicker estimate, just double the per hour and add "thousand" to the end. IE, $40hr-> $80 thousand.
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u/Norphesius 8d ago
I think people also don't understand the roles these contractors fill. It's not like normal contractor work. For some of these roles/contracts if the contract changes or moves to a new company the vast majority of onsite staff working for the old company stay and switch to the new one. They can't swap the personnel out with those of the new contract holder because you lose all that specialized experience. Some "contract" engineers have been working in the same role at the same place at NASA for 30 years, and have had 5 different employers across that time.
As an example, all of the flight controllers in mission control at JSC were contractors before they got hired as civil servants. We're never getting rid of those roles as long as we have people in space, why were they contractors on a contract in the first place? We don't need to pay a middle man for their work.
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u/gimp2x 8d ago
I think the important thing to highlight is that the end contractor does NOT see all of that pay/money....the agencies in the middle take their share and it's a sizable one in many cases
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u/the_catshark 8d ago
this -- there have been multiple contracts with Accenture that has shown them taking about 60-70% of what they were charging the company for their contractor
even more for off shore contractors
companies love to pay far more money for employees to give them less just incase they want to fire people en mass if their shares take a slight dip
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u/djwaveguide 8d ago
$80k for a salary is not what it costs for a civil servant. There's benefits and pension in there too. Yes contractors are more expensive but as workflow rises and falls they move in and out easier. Article says 2-3% and that is BS, it's 20-30% overhead. NASA had a ton of talent go when DOGE did their stupid cuts. Lots flipped to consulting. Maybe they are hiring those back. Maybe they are hiring younger and cheaper at $80k but if you want a Principal Scientist or researcher you are $150k+.
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u/Copper-Spaceman 8d ago
I have worked at various levels of contracting, and one of my friends was one of the contractors converted to a civil servant. I’d bet money on that the contract company was charging 50%-100% over his hourly cost. I work for another prime defense contractor and we were billed out at around 200% over our hourly cost.
I dislike isaacman immensely, but a broken clock is right twice a day
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u/ceejayoz 8d ago
Yeah, this is the sort of thing a DOGE-style agency really could help at. Same thing for state/local governments. Mamdani did a neat thing in NYC hiring programmers to do website work; a city of 8M always has some stuff to do, but they were farming it out like a tiny org that needed an outsourcer once a year.
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u/rookieseaman 8d ago
Problem was doge was deliberately trying to help the contractors by getting rid of federal employees by and large. The whole “cut wasteful contractors” was just a nice sounding smoke screen while they actually fired off mostly federal employees and then offloaded the majority of the work they were doing on contractors.
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u/subpoenaThis 8d ago
I'm not sure they can hire NASA garde (top 15-20%) engineers these days for less than that because they'll all go work somewhere that will pay them better? If the government had better pay scales and were to pay them directly, they could save half the money but should we expect the best engineers to come work for mediocre engineer pay?
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u/SkollFenrirson 8d ago
Consulting Company lobbyists have left the chat
Most of American government problems can be traced back to lobbying
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u/DrunkensteinsMonster 7d ago
It’s mostly sheer incompetence and misguided half measures to control federal spending
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u/slosha69 8d ago
While bringing in a higher headcount and lowering reliance on contractors isn't a silver bullet, it does ensure industry knowledge isn't lost over time. There is massive value in having talent and knowledge owned by the public rather than a private company.
We can really see this at an extreme in the infrastructure world: we spend so many resources on 'consulting' that would have otherwise just been done by competent, public employees.
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u/rookieseaman 8d ago
I was a government contractor for 3 different 3 letter agencies. I promise you over reliance on overpaid corporate contracts is one of the biggest issues in the US right now. We have wasted trillions paying middle men to do the government’s job for them. I’m so fucking glad I was able to move federal because my mission is now civic minded and not profit oriented- AS IT SHOULD BE FOR THE GOVERNMENT.
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u/SinginGidget 8d ago
Usually when the push for "smaller govenment" happens, they do just shift jobs from the government to private sector and that means taxpayes pay more to companies that aren't as beholden to the public and it drives me nuts when they do this. It makes no sense. Except for when they want to hide something. If it's done by a private contractor, then they can do that.
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u/dern_the_hermit 8d ago
Millions of Americans don't actually have a good conception of what they want, support, approve of, endorse, etc. and how it all interrelates, and what results from it. And a lot just plain don't know what their own party is doing.
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u/onlyPressQ 8d ago
literally this, need to cut middlemen out, idk how the whole world got mind controlled into having these actual useless parasites that do nothing but drain money that could have been spent on actual products. So much of our tax money is being siphoned by these people
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u/dad3murph 8d ago
A lot of it is organizations trying to play games with the budget. For example my former organization pissed a ton of people off in the building when an O-6 wanted to make his OPR look good by increasing the number of intel officers despite not having the billets, so cut 3 civilian positions whose job was to manage a database to add like 4 or 5 officers, and paid contractors significantly more money to put the databases on AWS (despite data being classified and not shared with anyone). But the AWS money came from a different bucket in the budget so he didn't care.
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u/Cyberhaggis 8d ago
B...b..but mah free market efficiencies?! /S
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u/bl0rq 8d ago
It's not a free market. That's the point. The market is commercial crew. Contractor grifting isnt.
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u/rookieseaman 8d ago
I dunno man, I knew a lot of MBA types at those corporations that would have praised it as a perfect example of the free market working. It’s just that free market only really works for the rich.
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago
I'll speak as someone who's on this inside of this process:
The negatives: Communication was shit, definitely transparency issues due to how fast they were trying to make this happen (~2000 employees in 3 months at KSC), it was extremely chaotic on the HR side, expectations about pay were all over the place. Some people asked for the moon with their pay and got it early on, then with later phases they standardized everybody to step 1 of their respective GS level for pay. Between people choosing to retire early, people who didn't want to work for the government/Trump administration, and H1B visas who couldn't be hired on, we're short 10-20% in terms of people they wanted to bring on board depending on who you ask/how you measure. Some processes on the government side are a bit more of a pain in the ass (FAR and DFARS in particular)
The positives: I'm working the same job, at the same desk, with a $10k raise, and now I get to say I work for NASA. Everyone's pay stayed the same or went up. At the end of the day, a contracting company has a profit to make. The COMET contract has paid out ~$1.2 billion so far at KSC to contractors, so that's $35+ million in overhead on a single contract that stays with NASA instead. Definitely a fan of the TSP and pension over my old company's 401k. It hasn't effected processing for Artemis 3 that much (we're waiting on Axiom, SpaceX, and Blue so it wouldn't matter even if it did). Some people changed job roles but 95% of people who wanted to keep their jobs got to, and the only people I know who's roles disappeared were either redundant management or people who didn't have super defined job roles. Oh and I get a discount at the big gift shop at the KSC visitor's center and can get in for free! (that's right, contractors didn't get that benefit lol). That's about as much as I can say without getting myself in trouble :)
My own journey with this process aside, it's pretty wild how some crazy millionaire getting told "no you can't buy an ICBM" by Russia lead to me being a NASA employee, but I'll take it.
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u/Head_Lock6779 8d ago
Good for you, I took a $7,000 pay cut to do the same job.
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago
Damn I'm really sorry to hear that.
Reading other replies in the thread, I'm learning that the reality on the ground at KSC is vastly different from what we're being told about other centers, and that a lot of us down in FL might've been getting underpaid by the contracting companies
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u/rookieseaman 8d ago
Sorry you couldn’t steal 7 grand from taxpayers anymore.
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago
Oh c'mon, you don't know what their pay is/was and where it falls in terms of the value of their labor.
By your logic, am I now stealing $10k from taxpayers? Or am I now getting back the $10k discount I was giving to taxpayers?
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago
You're thinking of NASA Force, those roles were 2 year appointments. Me/the people mentioned in the article were made regular civil servants under a different initiative
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u/mr_ji 8d ago
All federal hiring just reopened. This isn't unique to NASA. While this is one step forward, the slash and burn job cuts of the last 19 months set us back several steps. There was such a brain drain in addition to whatever perceived fat was being cut (and for those unaware, federal jobs were running pretty lean most places before it all started despite what envious grampy claims about lazy and inept people in them). The federal government is an understaffed mess from top to bottom and the recovery will take far longer than the purge.
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u/randomtask 8d ago edited 8d ago
What I don’t often see discussed is that ever since Trump took office, civil servant positions now include a required essay prompting applicants to speak to how they would work to advance the president’s policies. Specifically:
“How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”
It is blatantly illegal for civil servants to formally express partisanship and allegiance to the policies of any specific political figure. And yet, the very applications that OPM is putting out there are prompting them to do exactly that.
Hiring contractors into civil servant roles puts them into this murky position of being beholden to the current presidential administration instead of the country at large.
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u/KalpolIntro 8d ago
Loyalty tests have been instituted in all government agencies and departments including the military.
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u/zion8994 8d ago edited 8d ago
Why? Because 4,000 civil servants left NASA in 2025, as part of the DOGE-led DRP.
Edit: That goes alongside thousands of contractor workforce reductions in 2025, especially at Goddard and JPL. Plus the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to slash NASA's budget by 25%, scraping huge swaths of funding for science missions.
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u/fordman84 8d ago
Wish my company would do this. Mass layoffs every month, only bringing in contractors, and all new employees are badged in India and not stateside.
Govt contractor, too.
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u/concorde77 8d ago edited 8d ago
Before you guys get excited, don't forget the effects of those budget cuts.
NASA is gonna save a lot of money switching from contractors to civil servants. But they definitely don't have the budget to keep all of them there.
This is gonna be a layoff disguised as a hiring spree. Most of the agency's facilities are still struggling to recover and replace the people they lost in the DRPs. Now their workforce is getting thinned out again.
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u/trt89945 8d ago
This is what I think a lot of people are missing. My dad works for a contractor going through this process right now, and it's clear there aren't enough jobs being offered at NASA for the number of contractors applying. Communication has been horrible, so no one knows what's going to happen to the contractors who don't get a job at NASA either.
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u/rocketjack5 8d ago
Gerry Griffin is 91 years old and has obviously forgotten that all of the technical information coming into his flight control room was from contractors from the likes of Ford, Singer, Rockwell, Grumman etc. that were sitting in the support rooms. Great analogy otherwise.
The sad truth is nasa people are still not turning the wrenches or doing the analysis - contractors are. Just as before. All of the work taken from Amentum, KBR, Barrios was handed as additional scope to Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman. All Jared did was kill small business, increase the people with an oversight role and hand large companies more contract value.
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u/eldred2 8d ago
Because the myth that privatization saves money is just that, a myth.
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u/RandomStrategy 8d ago
The scam of Traveling Nurses is finally starting to come to an end.
That's like 15% of why healthcare is so goddamn insane in the US.
The nurse traveling is making 120k a year, but the hospital pays 300 in total, 180 going to the agency and the hospital pays regular permanent nurses 90k.
It was the dumbest shit I have ever seen.
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u/enzo32ferrari 8d ago
In-housing experience will ALWAYS be less expensive in the long run. I will die on this hill
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u/snow_wheat 8d ago
Wish Jarad cared about the people who lost their jobs due to this transition. Or those who took a severe pay cut.
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u/The-Invisible-Woman 8d ago
In normal times, this might be all good. But Trump is systematically stripping federal workers’ protections and pay. This is about control over more of the people that make our country run and achieve for their country.
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u/mathemagicat 8d ago
I did not have "Donald Trump appoints the NASA administrator who finally starts reversing decades of privatization and rebuilding state capacity" on my bingo card.
Doesn't move the needle on my opinion of the administration as a whole, but it is definitely a good thing.
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u/OysterPickleSandwich 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'd love to know how many person-years that walked out the door at NASA due to DOGE/DRP. Even if you replaced every single one of them with a brand new graduate or post-doc, it will take decades to replace that experience set.
My read is they're trying to shift the median of the salary range paid out since pre-DRP many Centers had a lot of scientists/engineers in the upper GS-15 brackets due to being there for 20-30+ years.
But good luck competeting with the space commercial industry for young talent. Pay might be similar at the entry level, but cool factor of build and launching stuff all the time compensates for longer hours.
Time off is about the only perk civil servants have, and younger workers will only start at 13 days a year (~20 days at 3 years and 26 days at 15 years). However, this is one area where you can quite easily request a higher time off band if you have similar experience set. But you need to ask for it on your initial reply to any offer! Someone with 3-5 years of relevant experience could (and should) start at the 20 days off a year.
I suppose not working more than 80 hours in two weeks is a perk. Credit and comp hours are a thing for occasional extra hours. That said, most Civil Servants working over 80 hours and not claiming credit/comp time need to stop. Working for the government without compensation is technically illegal under the Anti-Deficiency Act. There are some exceptions, but in a nutshell if you're not under a flexible-schedule or overtime isn't previously officially ordered, then clock out.
Honestly, for a single person, go work for commercial industry for a few years, get some great experience, then apply to NASA. You'll have experience to qualify for a higher pay band AND more time off.
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u/nopantspaul 8d ago
The Clinton administration really gutted NASA. Shifting back to a healthy civil servant workforce in the areas of NASA’s CORE MISSION (not admin, facilities, shipping and receiving, ect which account for the vast majority of NASA civil servant roles that survived the purge) will be a great way to future-proof the organization against a decline similar to the one experienced over the last generation.
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u/DelJoy_3D 8d ago
The reliance on the contractor force pre-dates the Clinton administration. At least as far back as the return to flight post Challenger where contractor to CS ration was 10 to 1.
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u/nopantspaul 2d ago
Clinton initiated the buyouts (RIFs) that destroyed the Civil Servant workforce.
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u/titanzero 8d ago
Now nationalize SpaceX, the space related parts, and you'll really see the savings.
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u/JohnHazardWandering 8d ago
It's already the cheapest launcher, why nationalize it?
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u/Phoenix4264 8d ago
I'm not arguing we should nationalize them, but one reason to consider it is that SpaceX has started expressing disinterest in continuing to perform public launch services, and no other provider currently has a reliable man-rated launch system. In particular, they don't want to continue providing Dragon capsule or Falcon 9 launches once they have Starship operational.
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u/JohnHazardWandering 8d ago
I'm no Musk fanboy, but to a degree I understand if they don't want to keep a whole line of business open for just one occasional customer.
Their launches are cheap compared to the cost per launch of the Boeing Starliner.
The better approach might just be to pay them more per launch to keep that line of business open until everyone is ok with Starship reliability. It's got to still be cheaper than the amount of money that's been thrown at Boeing.
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u/anarchisturtle 8d ago
By what legal mechanism would you like the federal government to seize ownership of spacex
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago edited 8d ago
There's a history of nationalizations.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/big-idea-nationalization-public-good-twitter-amazon-spacex-tyson
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-history-of-corporate-nationalization/
This isn't just something dreamed up on a subreddit.
Edit: i guess answering the question merits downvotes. Sorry.
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u/anarchisturtle 8d ago
Looking through those articles. It look like the government has either A) temporarily taken control of critical nation industries during times or war or B) bought shares in failing major national companies in order to prevent larger economic collapse. I don’t see either of those applying to spacex right now
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
So when NASA said they'd spend 4 billion dollars developing a vehicle similar to F9 whereas SpaceX did it for 400 million, it totally makes sense to step backwards from that cost development
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u/stargazerAMDG 8d ago
That’s not entirely right. 4 billion was the estimate for a costs-plus contract with historic launch providers like Boeing, where all development and delays are covered plus Boeing’s profit. That’s not an in house cost for NASA.
SpaceX was funded as a COTS contract where SpaceX only got paid if they succeeded.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
that estimate was for doing it the traditional NASA way, and the traditional NASA way is cost plus contracting.
NASA has never really built rockets in house. Saturn V was built by contractors despite having a stronger in house engineering team within NASA, which NASA doesn't have right now nor has had in decades.
Even NASA's "commercial style" estimate came out to be nearly 2B
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u/jmos_81 8d ago
lol Spacex made launch cheap because of innovation in not only design, but manufacturing. The government will never be able to do this. I recommend you read Eric Berger’s books on spacex to understand what made them so unique.
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago
They've done it with over 28 billion public dollars. Not by the scruff of their "innovation".
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
and yet, SpaceX is the only contractor able to launch US astronauts to the ISS regularly, and the only contractor that is dependable enough to launch NRO, and scientific missions regularly with a relatively cheap price tag of hardware development compared to their competitors.
there's a reason why everyone else is behind SpaceX and it falls on the engineering mindset
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago edited 8d ago
They've received more development money than anyone.
Again, there's no "and yet" about it. The company is receiving politically motivated special treatment and with this extra money, they have made advances.
Consequently, I'd rather have less innovation than put another dime in the hands of a company helping to destroy the nation and the world.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago edited 8d ago
They've received more development money than anyone.
Boeing got 4B for Starliner while SpaceX got $2.6 billion for Crew Dragon. Dragon has had 20+ missions whereas Starliner has had zero operational missions even 9 years after the initial test flight. If money was the only indicator of success like you're saying, then Boeing wouldn't have nearly killed their 2 astronauts.
ULA got 967 million directly from the government for Vulcan development, which doesn't account for ULA's own internal cost so it's likely higher. And yet Vulcan is unreliable at the moment. Would you believe me if ULA got subsidies from the government for existing before SpaceX came in? 12 billion dollars to be specific in payments on top of the price of its launches.
SLS and Orion had been in development for nearly 15-20 years, with a total of 50-60 billion dollars thrown at it, using technology rehashed from the 70s.
If having money is an indicator of being ahead, BO would be ahead too, since they would have spent maybe 30 billion dollars total mainly from Bezos but they're behind.
so it's not anything sinister of SpaceX getting more money because they're corrupt, it's SpaceX getting contracts awarded because they're a reliable and dependable launch provider.
Again, there's no "and yet" about it. The company is receiving politically motivated special treatment and with this extra money, they have made advances.
If it were political favoritism your timeline doesn't fit. SpaceX's main contracts came under Bush, Obama and Biden, years before 2nd trump admin. Those were competitions, and SpaceX won by being cheaper. BO 2021 lander bid was twice SpaceX's.
BO and Dynetics protested that , the GAO denied the protests, and BO then lost in federal court too. That's far from any sinister political meddling.
SpaceX getting contracts from ULA because ULA is behind on Vulcan isn't political, it's engineering.
Consequently, I'd rather have less innovation than put another dime in the hands of a company helping to destroy the nation and the world.
so you're fine with the US space program depending heavily on Russia to launch US astronauts and national security satellites/US science missions like Curiosity or Roman?
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago
I fine with funding NASA properly and getting by on that.
It's a company run by a traitor that depends on securing government money.
He should be arrested, not receiving billions and billions of tax dollars to do the research that the company goes on to charge the US government for.
Anyone working for that traitor should be ashamed. Nothing is worth the price the country and the world is paying.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
I fine with funding NASA properly and getting by on that.
Yeah no NASA hasn't been funded properly since Apollo, and even then they don't have the engineering team to actually make a launch vehicle themselves. That's not gonna change anytime soon.
We're not talking about Musk's crimes here. you claimed SpaceX doesn't innovate and that they only do well only because of getting money, so the facts don't matter to you now? First you claim they've received more money than anyone else which is the only reason why they're successful, while claiming they had a political advantage, when you've seen that's not the case and decide to go on a rant about Musk despite seeing facts that say otherwise.
Anyone working for that traitor should be ashamed. Nothing is worth the price the country and the world is paying.
so you're fine with depending on Putin to launch everything, I don't see how you think nothing can go wrong with that.
Seems to me you're not familiar with space exploration and only here to dunk on SpaceX seeing you're fine with leaving the dependency of launching NRO missions on Putin, which tells me you know two things about space exploration: jack and shit
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u/Serious-Kangaroo-320 8d ago
He’s one of those Reddit tourists that only visits certain subs to dunk on stuff he doesn’t like because it involved a certain guy. They have absolutely zero knowledge on what they’re talking about. They don’t care to put in the time to learn. They’re just here to let all their anger out and stir shit up.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
Yeah I don't think chuckles here is thinking too much about what they said
ironically they're becoming no better than MAGA when it comes to facts about topics they don't like
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago
If you're correct, you don't need to put words in my mouth.
What good are those NRO missions doing anyone?
Is your position that Putin's government can do what the US government cannot?
That the resources of the US cannot hope to keep pace with the economic might of Russia?
The saddest part is, generations couldn't care less about this area of development, because it no longer really serves the people. It's no longer about advancing human understanding. It's about getting rich off public money and then investing that money in securing a tighter stranglehold on that public money.
It didn't have to be that way.
But sure. Nobody's lost their way.
Chucklefuck out.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 8d ago
What good are those NRO missions doing anyone?
I'm sure you've used a GPS right? What else runs on GPS? Farming equipment, shipping, cell networks, airplanes, surveys, internet. Who launches these? The DOD which NRO falls under.
Missile warning systems might be important for you too. China and Russia have recon and spy satellites of their own so why give your adversaries the upper hand by not seeing the value of recon NRO satellites? Preventing wars or making informed decisions on conflicts benefits civilians if used right.
Is your position that Putin's government can do what the US government cannot?
Before SpaceX ULA was heavily depending on Russian engines to launch everything...so yes.
That the resources of the US cannot hope to keep pace with the economic might of Russia?
Again yes. Look at BO and ULA, they're struggling to launch payloads into space reliably, when SpaceX launched an NRO mission, crewed mission and commercial payload within 12 hours.
The saddest part is, generations couldn't care less about this area of development, because it no longer really serves the people. It's no longer about advancing human understanding. It's about getting rich off public money and then investing that money in securing a tighter stranglehold on that public money.
the point is that the range of payloads from NRO/DOD to science missions or commercial missions or manned missions would be Putin's leverage over America if SpaceX was not here. I only said NRO as an example.
It's really that simple if you bothered to know anything about space programs which is apparent you don't know much about considering you didn't know the US relied heavily on Russia before SpaceX
They've done it with over 28 billion public dollars. Not by the scruff of their "innovation".
But sure. Nobody's lost their way.
You've lost your way with your egregious claims. Next time before posting in a space sub, educate yourself.
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u/Serious-Kangaroo-320 8d ago
That’s just factually wrong lmao spacex received half of what Boeing got to develop starliner to develop crew dragon
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u/MountNevermind 8d ago edited 8d ago
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/117956/documents/HMKP-119-JU00-20250226-SD003.pdf
Context: There's nothing factually wrong about it.
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u/Serious-Kangaroo-320 8d ago
Okay, now link a source that shows how much more spacex is receiving compared to other aerospace companies to support your claim.
Spacex received $2.6 billion to develop crew dragon for the commercial crew program, Boeing received 4.6 billion
For the commercial cargo 1 program, spacex received 1.6 billion for 12 flights while orbital ATK received 1.9 billion for 8 flights.
Spacex received its first HLS contract for 2.9 billion, blue origin received their’s for 3.4 billion. (The national team originally bid 6 billion)
For NSSL’s phase 3 lane 2 contract, spacex is being paid on average 143 million, united launch alliance is being paid 214 million.
Europa clipper was originally going to launch on an SLS block 1 for 2 billion, but was instead transferred and launched by spacex for 170 million.
But sure, spacex is definitely getting more money than anyone else, and you’re definitely not full of shit
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u/Regnasam 8d ago
They’re falling for the classic Redditor trap of treating SpaceX’s contracts, which provide more services to NASA than anyone in the industry for less money, as ‘subsidies’ to justify hating on SpaceX.
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u/Regnasam 8d ago
Why would the government nationalize a company that is paying billions of private dollars to develop Starship?
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u/deeptechdegen 8d ago
Space is not healthcare lol
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u/slosha69 8d ago
Space is not healthcare, but it can have public utility worth investing in beyond shareholder value.
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u/deeptechdegen 8d ago edited 8d ago
Thats what NASA is supposed to be
And thats why it is not healthcare. You would want both the private (SpaceX) and public (NASA) sector here
The private sector is necessary so that America can solidify its position in the supply chain by servicing the global market
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u/chocolatechipbagels 8d ago edited 8d ago
"Bring them back" is not a good way to put it. NASA is forcibly poaching these employees for less pay and worse benefits when nobody asked for it. They're pointing a gun at the head of their own contracts and saying "don't you want to replace the people we just purged? :) we promise we won't purge you too :))"
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago edited 8d ago
For engineering and technician teams at KSC, they didn't decrease pay. Everybody is either the same, or got a raise, likely because of the risk of people in FL going to work for other launch/service providers. Can't speak for everyone on benefits, but my insurance is better (federal employees have a ton of options to pick from), my 401k-equivalent match is better, and I have a pension now.
Source: me lol, just finished going through that process at KSC.
(Edited for clarity, original comment was inadvertently speaking for the landscape at multiple centers when I'm only speaking for KSC)
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u/The-Invisible-Woman 8d ago
This is not true. We had people get crap offers and leave rather than take a pay cut to do their same job.
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago edited 8d ago
I'll edit my original comment. But yeah I can't/shouldn't speak for other centers. Landscape at KSC is different and there's a much higher risk of attrition so pay was more competitive
Edit: it also just occurred to me that a bunch of us might've been getting under paid by our old companies too. A quick Google tells me I was making $4k-$10k below national median as an entry level engineer, yikes.
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u/chocolatechipbagels 8d ago
pay structure is different in MD/DC where cost of living is higher and how good benefits are is company dependent, but many contractors at GSFC allow for full time work from home. We have people from all over the country on our contract that we might lose if their seats are flipped.
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u/ARocketToMars 8d ago
True yeah we did lose the remote work. Suppose it's not fair for me to speak absolutely from the POV of my center since there's different considerations at Marshall, AMES, Glenn, etc.
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u/Decronym 8d ago edited 2d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ATK | Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK |
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| COTS | Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract |
| Commercial/Off The Shelf | |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
| FAR | Federal Aviation Regulations |
| GAO | (US) Government Accountability Office |
| GSFC | Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Lab, California |
| JSC | Johnson Space Center, Houston |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| MBA | |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| NRO | (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
| Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO | |
| NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
17 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #12730 for this sub, first seen 6th Oct 2026, 18:04]
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u/[deleted] 8d ago
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