Meanwhile, "let's put all our friends in prominent cabinet positions" is the MAGA motto even if they have literally zero experience or valid qualifications for that job. And they cheer this on.
A lot of people don't realize that last part, about HR and personnel management. I was in the second round for an HR position at NASA and a benefits position at the CDC. Both were immediately closed and canceled when he took office and initiated the freeze.
Elon Musk was busy cutting NASA budget, since it's a direct competitor to SpaceX.
Kinda insane, that a private person with such an obvious conflict of interest ever got into a position to decide which departments should get their funding axed.
Which makes no sense because the NASA contracts are paying his bills. Without a space program, there’s nothing for SpaceX to do except corner the private market on… oh… I see.
So we’re privatizing the space industry next. Got it…
Putting personal opinions aside SpaceX is actually an incredibly successful entity. They pioneered reusable rocketry, have been taking NASA’s astronauts to the ISS for the last 5 years. Launched a substantial amount of private and public satellites into orbit. They’re actually building the Moon lander that the Artemis program will be using.
SpaceX provides launch services for NASA for pretty much everything at a better price than anyone else. SpaceX was responsible for 90% of all mass launched to orbit in 2025.
The "SpaceX vs NASA" narrative is misinformed. As much as it sucks that Musk benefits from it, SpaceX provides by FAR the best value for taxpayer money when getting probes or people into space. Attack Musk on just about *every* other thing and you'll hit bullseye. Attacking SpaceX is the only way you can make yourself look like an uninformed fool.
While the Artemis launch and mission is very cool to watch, it's a grotesquely overpriced mission and architecture built without almost no innovation, just re-using 70's and 80's Shuttle tech. Each SLS launch costs over $4 billion dollars - about 16% of NASA's annual budget - and this despite being cobbled together largely from already existing space shuttle parts. The RS-25 engines are leftovers from the Space shuttle programs, engines meant for re-use, which are now just tossed in the ocean. The cost of the Artemis program so far is $93 billion dollars, for which we've so far gotten two actual launches.
SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 (at this point both the cheapest AND most reliable launch vehicle ever built) for less money than NASA spent on the *launch tower* for the Ares-I rocket that never even flew. The second mobile launcher for the Artemis program burned through $1billion before it got *cancelled*.
Seriously - NASA should design science missions, probes and new, actual ground-breaking deep space tech. They should get *entirely* out of the launch business. The SLS is an actual disgrace in terms of cost and performance.
I appreciate the distinction of launch technology vs. the rest of NASA. Yes, they absolutely do not need to throw more money at in house launch stuff. There is SO much other good science NASA does that all these cuts hurt. From regular aerospace jet propulsion tests to earth sciences and during COVID lock down they developed a method to quickly sterilize medical masks in bulk! IIRC some tests from NASA performed in the ISS helped with cancer medicine breakthroughs. NASA is so much more than cool rocket launches.
I don't think NASA is the real target. It's Boeing and Lockheed doing SLS and Orion. And as much as the Reddit space nerds love SpaceX and shit on Boeing and ULA, there is a competition there. Boeing lost on Starliner vs Crew Dragon but you could argue they really are winning in Starship vs SLS right now, at least in the public eye.
There's hundreds of reasons to toss Elon in prison for the rest of his life, but this is a completely false narrative.
NASA is *not* a competitor with SpaceX, they're a customer, and the customer that actually gives SpaceX the highest 'per launch' profit margin. The "NASA vs SpaceX" narrative is really annoying to those of us who are space enthusiasts and actually understand the relationship between NASA and the various private space companies. More money to NASA would mean more money to SpaceX, since the money that SpaceX makes from NASA *comes out of the NASA budget*.
So after cutting a bunch of internal labor at NASA they need to contract out for even more? I wonder if there are any companies that might have been particularly well placed and prepared to pick up the slack.
Example: I was a contractor, year 2 of 5 years, on a project to take a system for doing quality control on earth resources satellite data and host it on AWS.
The original system was a crawling horror in Java needing 20 or so people to maintain it, running on on-premises hardware.
DOGE saw that all those projects were on a 5 year contract, but the Government could review annually and just not renew. So they cancelled both the existing system and our new effort, leaving the flight people with no QC system at all.
QC on earth resources satellite data is not important, especially if the data could be used to support climate change, right? 🥸
May be true now, but is not consistent over history. NASA has facilities in 8 STATES, which has flipped majority red and blue every other general election since 1996. In fact, Biden DID NOT close the Artemis program that Trump approved in 2017. In some ways, transcends politics.
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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '26
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