I work on one of these telescopes. Got the news today thay they’re trying to close Goddard, and the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, and basically all Earth observing satellite work. It would completely upend our ability to predict 7 day weather, extreme weather events like hurricanes, and make science basically inaccessible from space. I’m surprised they aren’t moving the funding over to SpaceX entirely.
It’s fucking heartbreaking to see, as an astronomy and astrophysics enthusiast.
At the same time, I hope that the loss in weather prediction capabilities leads to catastrophic damage to Mar a Lago and as many other of his properties as possible. And I admit that there’s a part of me that’s quite gleeful at the prospect of the maga-leaning parts of the country getting absolutely fucked by unexpected weather phenomena that will escalate in frequency and severity. Maybe it’ll render a bunch of those voters… unable to vote going forward, if you get my drift.
It really sucks. I legit feel like I might get kicked out of the space industry bcz of the dumbass administration. I will end up in the private sector making rockets for space tourism, which isn’t inspiring at all bcz, let’s face it. Going into space and being a billionaire isn’t all that special. But doing science for humankind, that’s something to aspire too, and they’re trying to take that away from us.
There’s so much more to the private sector than tourism rockets! Consider:
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Cheap components that don’t work
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Cheap satellites that don’t work
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Cheap lunar landers that don’t work
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Pump-and-dump get-rich-quick schemes
Man, I can’t wait to work on that stuff. It sounds inspiring.
I’m stuck here, I have a career and I’m too old to start over in a foreign country. But I’ll be getting my kids dual citizenship elsewhere and encouraging them to leave if things stay the way they are.
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For whatever it’s worth, I am quite sad that people like you are having their career motivations crushed by this idiocy. I wish I could help or move the needle in some way, because I think space exploration and pure science is fucking rad, but nobody gives a shit what engineers think anymore. They just plug us in to solve the problem just enough so that it’s an MVP and then don’t let us address any of the fucking tech debt. And I’m probably going off on a tangent here, but whatever. It’s Friday and I’m 4 beers deep.
We’re aiming for the biggest protest in us history (yet) on the 19th.
Space can be part of it too.
It was pure cringe how all these rich people just got back from space, like they think it’s an achievement, it’s nothing more than a rich person going to Everest . Shatner was quite disappointed
Some of them already think weather is a Democrat conspiracy .
It’d be both amazing and unsurprising to watch them not connect the cause-and-effect here.
It’s truly incredible how many times that cult can blow off its own feet and refuse to take accountability for it.
Aren’t they already getting fucked, their were quite a few storms that devastated the south recently, but MSM refuses to cover then
This is awful. I’m so sorry.
The anti science and intellectualism attacks has gotten worse. And stem was already teetering into abyss before, in terms of funding and stem majors finding jobs
That’s the whole point of SpaceX. Why have a space program when we can funnel endless money to a grifter?
less funding for you = more subsidies for Felon Musk.
Now we lost the space information and science race. Now, there won’t be sharing globally about scientific space breakthroughs. Now, those countries that do make those breakthroughs will sell us the information once it’s no longer relevant.
The extra stupid thing is that they’ll probably won’t save anything in the next 4 years anyways with how long timelines are for space planning. They’ll just waste an incredible amount of investment. This is just such petty and cruel retaliation against anything related to climate science.
They just enjoy smashing stuff others value for no reason.
Pressuring aerospace industry. Endless corruption & greed.
Oh right… Elon gets rid of all the competition and space startups that rely on NASA outsourcing their rockets, while he maintains his contracts they go bankrupt. Holy shit.
Yep, I do not understand how people cannot see how obvious this corruption and wealth theft is
So many terrible things are happening, people are overwhelmed and dazed and it’s hard to see what is Kakistocracy and what is Kleptocracy / disaster capitalism. It’s both and part of the strategy of course.
The only rational US news would be a call for revolution and overthrow of the regime. Any other news are therefor irrational and add to the confusion. Hence the confusion.
Ah man, NASA was pretty much the last thing cool thing about America.
How did I have bad luck enough to end up in the stupidest timeline?
They shot that fucking gorilla. That is how.
F
Save the gorilla. Save the world.
No, it was Bowie
Man, I didn’t even know David Bowie was in Ohio that day, let alone the same zoo!
Maybe that implies it’s the only timeline in which you exist.
so it’s their fault
It could also be the only timeline you’re in to tell me that. 🤷
Of course they are
When’s the next 50501?
Every weekend for the foreseeable future. A big event planned for April 19.
(I know you surely knew all this, I’m just playing the part, for the benefit of the audience.)
SpaceX was always a space scam. Now it’s the only scam.
How is SpaceX a scam? Falcon 9 is the best rocket in the world at this time.
Is this a semantics argument? Like you’re arguing over the proper use of “scam”? or do you not see how the word scam could be implied in this context?
I ask because I was about to present a big thing with links and timelines showing how this has all played out since the early 2000’s, but I’m not gonna go to all the trouble if you’re just upset that a better word should be used besides “scam” since there is some sort of measurable output being performed.
(I still think scam is apt when you start breaking down the terminology though, it’s still fraudulent practices which have been performed for the companies benefit, i.e. funding away from NASA)
Mmm, probably. If you focus only on the missed deadlines and failed research projects, it could be considered a scam. But in spaceflight that’s more the matter of fact for a project than the exception. I can’t think of even ONE rocket that launched on time or on budget. I mean, look at SLS (a project that actually IS managed by NASA). Now THAT is a mismanaged fiasco that makes SpaceX look mighty responsible in comparison.
But if you also include SpaceX’s successes, you see that they are simply the best rocketry company in the world. They STILL have the only reusable booster, and one of, if not the highest reliability rating of any ride to space. There’s nothing scammy about a product that provides you exactly the service you requested, with less risk and cost.
Sure, call Starship a scam if you want to. It’s unproven and the project could still fail. But SpaceX as a whole absolutely is not.
There’s nothing scammy about a product that provides you exactly the service you requested, with less risk and cost.
…
Without reading or verifying anything, I’m just going to assume this is an Elon alt.
I am highly critical of Elon Musk, who is not only a vile human, but is doing more damage to the world than anybody else, except maybe Donald Trump.
But I also understand the launch services industry and know that NASA doesn’t have a viable launcher right now if they stop purchasing Falcon 9, and the only people capable of launching at that cadence right now is probably China.
They sure know how to blow up rockets real good.
Falcon 9 is one of the most reliable rockets of all time. Yeah, their prototypes blow up way too often, but those never had cargo aboard because they’re in testing anyway.
A Musk property can do nothing good while doing so much bad, my dude.
Musk is truly the worst of humanity, but just because he is vile scum doesn’t imply that everything he’s ever touched is bad.
Humans infuriatingly tend to assume that because a person is distasteful that everything associated with them must be stupid, broken, or unethical. This is not true, and is a logical fallacy called the “genetic fallacy” — judging something as good or bad based on its source rather than its actual merit.
Falcon 9 is excellent and gives NASA launch capabilities it doesn’t have, for a fraction of the price it was paying before for launch services.
But like, let’s take the Cybertruck as an opposite example. I wouldn’t care if Bernie Sanders himself invented it, it’s a piece shit vehicle.
I like SpaceX. They have done and continue to do some truly amazing things but I can’t get excited for their successes any more because of their association with Musk.
If he we’re just a shitty business man I’d get it and would just choose not to buy his products, but he’s inserted himself into the workings of our government and our everyday lives. He’s actively participating in tearing apart our democracy. Cool rocket, bro doesn’t fucking cut it. It’s like saying Hitler was a bad guy, yes, but he really helped revolutionize vapor transfer technology.
It’s fine to continue to downvote me on this. I may be wrong, but the merit of what I said is what matters, right?
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Starship is a 100% categorical failure though. It’ll never carry a payload.
I also tend to think Starship is a terrible architecture. They should just put a traditional second stage on top of Superheavy and get on with it already. It may not even be possible to re-enter such the ship from orbital speeds safely.
Tell me Falcon Heavy couldn’t push a Crew Dragon to the moon.
If you’re interested in space it’s better to shift your gaze towards the ESA and CNSA. NASA isn’t long for this world.
Man, I just wanted to see humans on the moon in my life. NASA seemed like the best bet because they’re the only agency from the space race, with the recorded experience of doing long terms Spaceflight, still doing innovative things. Roscosmos hasn’t done much new since the soviets fell apart, even though we now know they had some wacky plans for things like Tri-propellant shuttles, and Energia was an amazing heavy lift vehicle that is basically just scrap metal at this point.
I thought Elon would be the reason we didn’t go to the moon because of starship being vaporware. Turns out Elon is the reason we’re not going to moon because he wants to cover up that starship is vaporware.
Shuttering NASA is a net loss not just for the USA but for the entire species. Everything from battery powered power tools, Velcro, the glass on our phones, the little safety grooves on highway off ramps, and a thousand other advancements not even including going to fucking space, can be traced back to NASA pushing human Spaceflight to its limit. Every dollar spent on Apollo generated something like 3 dollars in growth for the US economy because of all of the R&D that companies had to throw at the problem.
I only hope that either the ESA or CNSA can actually put humans on the moon. It was insane 50 years ago and it’s insane even today, but I still think that Armstrong’s first step onto the moon should go down as one of the most important moments in human history, the first time a human left earth and put his foot down on a different celestial body is just as important as the harnessing of fire or electricity. It should be the first step of many, not just a brief footnote that marks we were there.
Don’t forget ISRO.
If you’re in the USA, don’t get your hopes up.
From their job descriptions:
Please note that applications are only considered from nationals of one of the following States: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Canada, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.
In my career I’ve learned there is a difference between what they ask for, and what they’ll accept. If a NASA engineer with some crazy specific knowledge and skills offers their services, these rules might suddenly not apply.
Fair enough, and on that same token, if you are that person you probably don’t need to check if there’s even an opening that fits your knowledge. Just apply.
The other positions, though, probably will follow that requirement more closely.
I’ve absolutely been following some of the eurospace startups a lot more closely lately. The next time I switch jobs might be the first time I switch continents.
who needs science when you make your own truth?
In walks SpaceX I presume. Or he’ll make TelescopeX
TeleGrok
No need to see anything when you can just generate random bullshit.
All future telescopy will be limited to asteroid mining.
You can’t fix stupid. 🤦🏻♂️
I don’t think stupidity is the driver here. This is all very deliberate.
Yeah, the Christ fanatics hate science and find science to be their bitter enemy, essentially
Yes, you can. With a shotgun.
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No, sorry. Roman is a Hubble-class telescope with a wide field of view. It will do much more imaging than Hubble, but with about the same quality.
The only thing in life that I’m actually really passionate about… Cool stuff.
This administration finds new ways for me to wish for their death every day.
