By the end of today, NASA's workforce will be about 10 percent smaller

It sounds like they're firing the wrong 10%.

From what I've heard, the problem at NASA is it has a lot of lifers who justify their positions through bureaucracy.

This reduction gets rid of the people at NASA who actually get stuff done. People who get stuff done can easily find jobs in industry, so are more likely to accept buyouts. It also gets rid of the young probationary employees who are still idealistic and have not yet been corrupted by the system.

Taking the engine out of the car to reduce weight and improve efficiency

No biggie... the effects won't be seen until a Democrat is in charge again, business as usual.

Just an anecdote but my family member does university research and gets grants from NASA (also is ex NASA and left NASA due to too many rest & vest folks). In the last round of reviews there were 20+ NASA employees sent locally to review for a couple 1 hour meetings. Initial take from the outside is it looked like a seriously bloated process.

Not sure in how many countries it would be ok to slash NASA personnel while having your own space company.

I work for a NASA contractor. This is a very stupid, bad move, since young and recently-called-up civil servant talent are often the people we really want to keep. We will be hurting on the Artemis program if the probationary civil servants all fired.

In general, I agree that a thorough house-cleaning of NASA would be great for technical achievement, but this is one of the stupidest ways you could do it.

Surely it's a conflict of interest when private space man fires government space people?

That's great. Was it done in a way that is in accordance with the law, or are we trying to run government like a business, which it definitely should not be?

NASA will likely find themselves in a position where they have to outsource more work to companies like ... SpaceX.

What a coincidence, and a totally unexpected outcome from these cuts to "save taxpayer money".

Ultimately the goal is privatization. Ask the British how privatizing their rail network has worked out for the average citizen.

From the article itself:

"Are cuts needed?

It is also clear that, as within other federal agencies, there is significant "bloat" in NASA's budget. In some areas, this is plain to see, with the space agency having spent in excess of $3 billion a year over the last decade "developing" a heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which used components from the Space Shuttle and costs an extraordinary amount of money to fly. In the meantime, the private launch industry has been running circles around NASA. Similarly, consider the Orion spacecraft. This program is now two decades old, at a cost of $1 billion a year, and the vehicle has never flown humans into space.

One could go on. Much of the space community has been puzzled as to why NASA has been spending on the order of half a billion dollars to develop a Lunar Gateway in an odd orbit around the Moon. It remains years away from launching, and if it ever does fly, it would increase the energy needed to reach the surface of the Moon. The reason, according to multiple sources at the agency when the Gateway was conceived, is that the lunar space station would offer jobs to the current flight controllers operating the International Space Station, which is due to retire in 2030."

The only bright side here is that the grossly over-subsidized regime of Alabama, where the local economy is 95% government science "overhead", is going to get kicked in the face by DOGE boot, and no state deserves it more.

>According to sources, about 750 employees at NASA accepted the "fork in the road" offer to take deferred resignation from the space agency later this year. This sounds like a lot of people, but generally about 1,000 people leave the agency every year, so effectively, many of these people might just be getting paid to leave jobs they were already planning to exit from.

The culling of "probationary" employees will be more impactful. As it has done at other federal agencies, the Trump administration is generally firing federal employees who are in the "probationary" period of their employment, which includes new hires within the last one or two years or long-time employees who have moved into or been promoted into a new position. About 1,000 or slightly more employees at NASA were impacted by these cuts.

Just in case anyone thinks this could tighten up performance, the layoffs are being targeted at the most mobile and the best.

Like every other decimation that's happened, it will be whatever is politically expedient and have nothing to do with need, skill, capabilities, or job performance.

The real cuts are comming when the debt ceiling is threatening a goverment shutdown, which will then allow the introduction of "emergency measures" vs it's our budget and we have the legal right to bankrupt the country

Would be interesting to see if SpaceX headcount grows in near future.

ESA is hiring: https://jobs.esa.int/

Pretty funny all these comments about something that didn't happen.

Spacex will be 6% larger

10% seems pretty innocuous to me.

Letting go of all probationary employees (hired in the last year) is precisely the wrong way to do any of this.

I suspect we will also be hearing about the long time experts that are the only ones who maintain or know about certain systems being rehired desperately..

DOGE is frankly ruining the reputations of Silicon Valley and software engineers in a way I didn’t think possible.. they’re being very stupid about what they’re doing.

well... that's not good.

All of this while the idiots are pushing a $4.5T in tax cuts. Neoclassical economics and neoliberalism will be the downfall of capitalism itself.

Musk and Trump are like a new team owner in professional sports who decides to save money by firing their entire minor league system, except with way more pettiness and spite.

But hey, Musk gets to keep eliminating everyone who might exercise oversight on his companies or business activities, so it's all good right?

Is Space X going to be getting at least 10% less per day?

They are at $8 Million a day from governement I think I read?

So privatize the profits, socialize the costs?

Is this still happening or are they going to write off everything now not exclusively white men as ZOMG DEI

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65165845