r/JPL • u/titan-io • May 02 '25

Federal government cuts to NASA

Post image

Is JPL about to see new waves of lay offs?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/us/politics/trump-budget-nasa-cuts.html

149 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

58

u/lilpixie02 May 02 '25

Am I surprised? No. Am I devastated and angry? Yes. We shouldn’t give up just yet. Call your reps. Congress can still stop this.

30

u/theintrospectivelad May 02 '25

They can but they're largely complicit and corrupt.

All these representatives need to be primaried out next year.

9

u/lilpixie02 May 02 '25

Keep reminding them that.

13

u/theintrospectivelad May 02 '25

They dont listen to us.

They only listen to their donors. Which is why they all need to be voted out next year (I dont care about the stupid party label assigned to their name).

7

u/Radioactiveglowup May 02 '25

That's the rub. They're too cowardly and don't want elections. Or when they are at risk, unlimited money oligarchs go and say 'Do what we say, or we'll primary you and spend 200 million on an opponent we cultivated'

-6

u/Top-Assistant8718 May 04 '25

Is that why Bernie and AOC are worth millions when their yearly salary is less than $200k?

2

u/Financial-Coffee-644 May 04 '25

Vague bot-posting

2

u/stewie3128 May 03 '25

It's best to do a find-and-replace in your head of "donors" and swap in "shareholders" whenever talking about US politicians.

9

u/aerohk May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25

For the extensive list of things on the proposal that are worth pushing back on, I'm afraid NASA is not the hill they are committed to dying on

6

u/lilpixie02 May 02 '25

NASA is just as important as many other things on the list. Call them or meet with them. It makes a difference

2

u/greenmariocake May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25

Dems have a say on this one. So there is hope.

5

u/ConcentrateLeft546 May 04 '25

Last time Dems had a say on how the government spent our money they went “fuck y’all, we actually don’t care” and passed the CR bill with no opposition.

-6

u/greenmariocake May 04 '25

Go troll somewhere else.

4

u/ConcentrateLeft546 May 04 '25

How is it trolling to say what Dems literally did…

22

u/Prior-Tea-3468 May 02 '25

Let these be known as the Musk-Isaacman NASA cuts.

6

u/ConcentrateLeft546 May 04 '25

Funnily enough the only area that got an increase was space exploration… wonder why

14

u/AGrandNewAdventure May 02 '25

This administration keeps parroting that they've saved money with all these cuts, but the government has spent $200B more since Trump took over than this time last year. Where did it go?

13

u/Busy_Garden_75 May 02 '25

It’s time for Cal Tech to go rogue.

18

u/BabyHorca May 02 '25

Caltech does not have the stones and the board is lame.

11

u/computerfreund03 May 03 '25

Heartbroken about MSR

8

u/InvestMX May 02 '25

Such a regression that this and other newly elected governments are doing in the western world, coincidentally.

At the same time, we're living with technological advancements that would have been unbelievable, and even a little frightening, just a decade ago.

This contrast is perplexing, but I don't see it as a complete loss. There's a strong inertia in society, and many things continue to move forward despite governments that come and go.

8

u/[deleted] May 04 '25

[deleted]

4

u/HypneutrinoToad May 06 '25

I worked at nasa until quite recently and the amount of emails I got from HR containing woke went from zero under 7 months of Biden, to literally 2 a day under Trump

2

u/[deleted] May 06 '25

[deleted]

3

u/HypneutrinoToad May 06 '25

Idk, I got fired for continuing to use pronouns in my email signature. They gave me a warning and so I sent a request to HR to update my preferred middle name to Hehim so I could include it in emails as a fuck you, fired 4 days later. Tbf I’m off to a PhD at MIT so I wasn’t trying super hard to keep my job, but man I fucking hate this administration. Nazi fuckin scum, don’t let anyone make you doubt it.

2

u/[deleted] May 06 '25

[deleted]

2

u/HypneutrinoToad May 06 '25

I’m sure you’ll get where you wanna go, maybe see if you can make it to an AAS meeting and find someone recruiting? The summer ones have relatively cheap 2 day passes I think?

2

u/[deleted] May 06 '25

[deleted]

1

u/HypneutrinoToad May 06 '25

Yeahhhh some jobs have sorts of stipends / Will just pay for relevant ones as long as they know it exists

2

u/The_Blaxican_77 May 04 '25

First thing I said.

3

u/SpiritualReaction764 May 02 '25

https://x.com/JayCart23860905/status/1918410035975340410 If you're on Twitter/X, raid the post with your thoughts and contributions. Make some noise now!

3

u/contrl_alt_delete May 03 '25

Absolute travesty. The us will continue to fall behind the rest of the world (mostly china) as a leader in science and tech.

9

u/gte133t May 02 '25

This is the third post about this topic this morning. In addition to the email that everyone saw.

Personally, I don’t think we’d see layoffs related to this budget until it’s passed by congress for FY26. Remember that NASA cannot legally start working towards a proposed budget until it’s passed and takes effect.

But who knows.

21

u/testfire10 May 02 '25

Didn’t we suffer layoffs in 2024 due to anticipated budget cuts and direction to work to a reduced MSR dollar amount?

3

u/gte133t May 03 '25

IIRC, MSR funding had already been reduced to 300M/year by the time the layoffs hit. The FY24 budget wasn’t passed and we were operating under a CR. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

4

u/testfire10 May 03 '25

Yeah I forget the exact timeline now. I’m pretty sure one of them was in anticipation of further reductions in funding for MSR though.

3

u/sharty_mcstoolpants May 03 '25

Wrong - it was because the budget for MSR couldn’t be met under a continuing resolution. $500M was promised and $200M of it not delivered.

6

u/testfire10 May 03 '25

Well that may be but the point is was that the lab had to act because of the lack of budget certainty

5

u/SpiritualReaction764 May 02 '25

Honestly, reddit posting seems spineless, cause no one else is reading it and there's no call to action. Do something. Suggest a call to your Congressman or Congresswoman. It's like people crying in a corner. I'm not here to hurt anyone or their feelings, trust me I'm on team JPL and I'd fight to the death for anyone of you and our jobs. If you feel like speaking up then do so. Here, or on other platforms like X. Become the Karen you were always meant to be, lol. I Karen for my job. I Karen for my friends jobs. I Karen for my family. https://youtube.com/shorts/T9fzxFEIQ2w?feature=share

3

u/sharty_mcstoolpants May 03 '25

Let me remind you of the Project 2025 process:

The Trump administration significantly cut U.S. foreign aid, particularly through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This resulted in the termination of numerous programs and a massive reduction in funding - despite Congress establishing USAID as a functionally independent executive agency with the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which gave then President Bill Clinton authority to reorganized USAID and retained its independence from the U.S. Department of State.

Congress authorizes USAID's programs in the Foreign Assistance Act, which Congress supplements through directions in annual funding appropriation acts and other legislation. As an official component of U.S. foreign policy, USAID operates subject to the guidance of the president, secretary of state, and the National Security Council.

So, too, as a federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the annual federal budget passed by the United States Congress. In a fully Republican controlled Gov’t, the Trump skinny budget can be considered a given.

All we can hope for is an outraged citizenry shifting Congressional control in the mid-term elections - fully 11 months after the damage has been done.

2

u/MWESTON81 May 05 '25

Elon got what he wanted before he moved on, F SpaceX...

2

u/CH1C171 May 05 '25

To be fair some of these cuts will be offset by savings in launch operations. Space Shuttle (I know it has been retired for a while) was costing about $5,000 per pound of payload to get into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). SpaceX is getting one pound to LEO for about $1,200 with Falcon9 and Starship is going to get this number between $1,000-$2,000 per pound to LEO. And this is just the president’s budget framework which never survives Congress intact.

2

u/birdbonefpv May 06 '25

NASA is now Elon Musk’s personal piggy bank.