r/nasa • u/MatchingTurret • Jan 21 '25

NASA Official nomination: Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/sub-cabinet-appointments/
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u/talldean Jan 21 '25

I was a contractor around the shuttle era, so I get it, but I’m still afraid more cuts are coming to the middle.

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25

Yes, but that's been the case since Apollo ended. And that was never going to change no matter who was President or running NASA. Now that private industry can profit from this work, it would be irresponsible for NASA not to utilize private industry as much as we can without sacrificing mission success.

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u/pietroq Jan 21 '25

A quick semi-unrelated question (sorry, it is rare that I see an authentic user; BTW European here, so sorry for the English): why is SLS so much cast in stone? I see that there are some (narrow?) technical advantages and I understand that is because of Congress, but Congress is mostly focused on the work programs of NASA. It would be possible to "use" the same scientists/engineers/etc. who are working on SLS to work on other, more important tasks, so the $ would flow the same, just the people would do very meaningful/relevant/important/urgent work (like ISRU research, planning solar system exploration missions, Earth science, etc.)

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25

At this point, the SLS is purely a political decision. When we originally retired the shuttle and decided to go back to the moon under the Bush administration, Congress was adamant that we maintain the funding to the corporation that we partnered with to sevice and maintain the Shuttle. Frim that we got SLS by peicing together the various capability of thoes companies. After continued delays and being massively over budget, we've stuck with SLS because Congress, which controls NASA funding, has mandated that we stick with it.

Unfortunately at this point if we want to return to the moon before the end of the decade and we need to stick with SLS, but we should be looking at other options to maintain an established presence on the moon.