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Nasa brought crashing down to earth as budget threat follows lunar success (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

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It should have been a victory lap for Jared Isaacman. The Nasa administrator was in Washington DC for what he surely hoped would be a celebration with lawmakers and the US president, little more than two weeks after the successful conclusion of the first human journey around the moon in more than half a century.

Instead, last week began with some difficult questions in Congress about the Trump administration’s unpopular plan to slash the space agency’s budget. It ended at the White House with the president appearing to poke fun at his prominent ears, watched by four bemused Artemis II astronauts waiting in vain for any question about their historic mission.

There could have been no better illustration of how Donald Trump has tarnished the aftermath of Nasa’s greatest moment in five decades, and is singularly focused on dismantling the agency’s science programs even as he urges it to plant a Stars and Stripes flag back on the moon before he leaves office in January 2029. At least part of Trump’s hostility to Nasa’s science programs appears to stem from his animus towards the agency’s role in climate research.

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[–] Paragone@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

NASA's only purpose in Trump's dominion is:

ego-drama, like Artemis*
weapons-enablement.

Science-for-science's sake is opposite to his paradigm.

Concentration-of-privilege-for-its-own-sake is his paradigm.

This was easily forseen, by all.

The problem I have with Artemis, is that it was an institution-ego mission, not a engineering-for-science mission:

You know how multiple Falcon9 missions have been saved when an engine-anomaly/failure happened, but they had sooo many engines on the thing, that the mission wasn't destroyed?

You know how that's even-more-true with their SpaceShip design?

Artemis's got 4 main engines:
ANY anomaly with 1 of those, & the mission's probably destroyed.

That was a DESIGN choice.

Since engine-anomalies are guaranteed sooner-or-later, that means that they CHOSE to make such events more-fatal.

Incompetent, in my eyes, but politically-motivated-institutions, & I was paying-attention when Richard Feynman eviscerated the culture of NASA back in the Challenger disaster days, can only be rooted-out by replacing .. usually the entire top-brass, to change the culture.

Same as with Boeing's culture remains the same, so anybody expecting different-results .. is betting on makeup/paint, not on the underlying-substance.

IF you won't remove the wrong-culture from the top, THEN you CANNOT change the organization's culture, throughout.

IF you won't change the organization's culture throughout, THEN it'll keep doing the same kinds of deformed-decisions, because its motivation remains the same: wrong.

Institutional-politics motivation cannot be permitted to rule science.

Not within NASA, & not national-gov't-ruling-NASA/Science-board/medical-science/etc.

Segregation of church from state, and segregation of politics from judiciary+journalism weren't the only 2 required-segregations: segregation of politics from science+engineering+management also was required.

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[–] megopie@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Realistically, to alter culture, it is required that the structure of an institution must be modified as well, the personalities and priorities of those who end up leading are selected for by the incentives and structure of an organization. The people who “play the game right” so to speak, end up in leadership and leadership reinforces and defends the structure that got them where they are. But just swapping out leaderships without altering structure and incentives will lead to little change in the long run.

Ultimately nasa does have to play politics to receive funding from congress, that’s always been the case and always will be, there is no space exploration without public funding. That means doing stuff that is exciting to the public and convinces them to pressure congress to support it. I’d argue the flawed issue that has lead to some problems is them playing “job creation” politics which forces them to commit to wasteful facilities and companies that have outlived their usefulness to space exploration.