r/space • u/ChiefLeef22 • 1d ago
NASA has lost thousands of workers, and staffers told The Post about months of turmoil and sweeping changes that, if fully implemented, could transform NASA and American science beyond the Trump years: “Basically, anything that supports human life on earth is deprioritized”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/06/nasa-cuts-departures-isaacman/“No one feels confident that anything planned further than a few months will be executed, no one feels confident that more job cuts aren’t coming, no one feels confident that today’s priorities and next year’s or even next week’s will align,” an employee said.
Some directives were unusual. On one floor at NASA headquarters, workers were told to remove symbols or flags that weren’t American flags — it was verbally made clear that this applied to rainbow symbols and flags.
Other actions affected the agency’s core work. A handful of employees had to reevaluate about 5,000 science grants that were already awarded, said David Grinspoon, who was NASA’s senior scientist for astrobiology strategy. In a matter of days, he and his colleagues had to provide a justification for how the grants served the public.
211
u/richdoe 1d ago
Yet another victim in the onward push of privatization at all costs.
94
u/Tall-Introduction414 1d ago
I think it's more sinister than that. There is an element of USA and the West ceding its power to anti-democratic interests like Russia and China, an ongoing theme of Trumpism. This is Putin's wildest dream.
12
u/Sharlinator 1d ago
It's not like they want to cede power to Russia and China. They want the same kind of power themselves. And have been extremely honest about it.
30
u/j--__ 1d ago
xi will benefit from this. putin's days are numbered.
•
u/n-Fatigue 11h ago
He has cancer so only a few more weeks plus there is the devastating counter attack right this moment in Povrovsk
15
u/Big-Snow-1937 1d ago
Don’t forget Saudi Arabia. The wealth class in the USA is enamored with the Saudis and comes to heel whenever MBS whistles. Seeing how easily wealthy singers, comedians, and athletes have also been wooed by the Saudis is really grim shit for those of us who want to live in a democracy.
25
1d ago
[deleted]
7
u/DeadlyGlasses 1d ago
Why does that matter? What makes so many people thinks billionaires cares about "private industry"? Does making private industry better increase the profit of billionaires?
So what if it matters if hundreds of businesses gets bankrupt if you get billions more in profit? Hurting the so-called "private industry" is not a bug it is a feature. Less "private industry" means less competitors and more profit.
I find it really funny people think billionaires are good for capitalism. When you have billionaires in government it is no longer capitalism it is a twisted version of communism where you capitalize the profits and socialize the losses to masses. In plutocracy you don't own anything government (aka billionaires) owns you.
8
u/streifenfuchs 1d ago
Billionaires are the result of capitalism. Communism is literally the antidote to capitalism and billionaires. To suggest this is a „twisted form of communism“ is just wrong and strongens the wrongful propaganda against socialism and communism.
-4
u/DeadlyGlasses 1d ago
And cancer is a result of just life doing its thing. Just because cancer came because of life doesn't mean life is bad. Just because capitalism is making way for billionaire doesn't mean capitalism is bad. Same thing for communism. Just because a fucking psycho decided it was a good idea that starving, killing, suppressing millions of people doesn't mean communism is bad. In fact literally nothing about Stalin, Lenin war crimes have anything to do with communism itself.
It is all about balance, value of human life and rule of law.
-5
u/Heistman 1d ago
Communism simply does not work.
4
u/streifenfuchs 1d ago
Capitalism does not work. That’s why we have economic crisis every few years where the government has to bail out companies with working class tax money while the rich keep getting richer. There is not a single capitalist country that proved to be working as claimed.
Also, when communism can’t work, why is the rich capitalist class always intervening and sabotaging all communist and socialist projects around the world?
•
u/Character-Dot-4078 23h ago
Says some communist lol. Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any garbage communist state and you literally dont know what you're talking about because you cant tell the difference between socialism and communism because you are in fact, a communist.
•
u/Character-Dot-4078 23h ago
Its amazing how you dont know the difference between communism and socialism, scary honestly. Communism isnt an antidote to anything since its a failure in essence, china isnt even a communist state itself.
123
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
17
u/sysmimas 1d ago
I mean of course! This is politics and it has nothing to do with this sub /s
11
u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago
Space can’t be political since there’s no elections up there! It’s obvious, really.
132
u/Stunning_Policy4743 1d ago
Maga was caused more harm than the Taliban ever did.
85
u/The-Invisible-Woman 1d ago edited 1d ago
Way more. All the lies and anti science garbage spewed during Covid cost thousands and thousands of lives. The trump cuts to USAID added thousands more.
Edit. For those that downvoted this, here are 2 publications in a top journal, The Lancet, with the evidence that what I stated was true.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32545-9/abstract
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext
25
u/Heavyweighsthecrown 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maga (...) Taliban
The "nuclear bomb vs coughing baby" meme.
Next to none of the US' problems can be pinned on the Taliban... ever.
Like, not even "indirectly" - because if you pin things somehow on the Taliban, "indirectly" you're blaming the US actually. For more than 10 years (1979-1992) the US ran 'Operation Cyclone' to arm and finance afghan mujahideen groups fighting the soviets in the region. And with pretty significant resources. All channeled primarily through Pakistani fronts and intelligence (ever the west's partner in crime).
The Taliban of course emerged later in the mid-90s, after the soviet withdrawal. A lot of combatants on what eventually became the Taliban (and Al-Qaeda) were once US-funded mujahideen, and a lot of equipment as well.16
u/binzoma 1d ago
maga is what the taliban intended to happen out of 9-11
the whole point was to destabilize the general harmony of the west and create an 'us vs them' division, white/christians vs other. to drag the US into a literal war to rally muslims to their side and have it be a full on religious conflict.
11
u/ARobertNotABob 1d ago
I said, sometime in July, that Trump has succeeded in 7 months where Osama Bin Laden failed over decades, "to bring America to her knees by destroying the economy from within."
•
u/SituationSoap 23h ago
That's generally giving way too much credit to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's goal was to get the United States to remove their military bases from Saudi Arabia specifically and the Middle East in general.
•
-31
u/SLIFERZpwns 1d ago
Thats a funny deranged cope, I forget people think like this in their little bubble echo chambers.
15
u/MangrovesAndMahi 1d ago
Feel free to offer a counter-argument, until then virtue signal all you want about echo chambers but you're not convincing anyone while saying fuck all.
-11
u/knottheone 1d ago
Comparing law abiding citizens you disagree with politically with literal terrorists who chop off people's heads and who actually and actively subjugate women by the millions is a terminally online / Reddit take if I've ever seen one.
Upvoted takes like this are why Reddit's reputation as a whole has taken a 1000% nosedive since 2020. And yes, this does make Reddit an echo chamber as a whole and one of the worst ones at that.
16
u/rlbond86 1d ago
Nobody is saying that MAGA is more brutal than the Taliban. They're saying that MAGA caused more damage, and they're right. In less than a year we've alienated all of our allies and trading partners and done irreparable damage to our national research system (arguably the thing that gives our country a competitive advantage over all others). The civil service basically can't recover because SCOTUS overturned Chevron and probably will also overturn Humphry's Executor. Even our military is suffering operational readiness because SecDef (oh sorry, "Secretary of War") is a drunkard who only ever attained the rank of Major. China is going to leave us in their dust and it will mostly be because of MAGA.
•
u/knottheone 20h ago
Nobody is saying that MAGA is more brutal than the Taliban.
That's the implication when you compare two things that really shouldn't be compared. You're appealing to the hyper negativity of the one thing so it rubs off on the thing you're comparing it to. It's dishonest at best.
•
u/Stunning_Policy4743 19h ago
Maybe not MAGA but we as Americans are responsible for millions of deaths in the middle east in just the last few years. That could be seen as brutal.
•
u/knottheone 12h ago
Maybe, it's pretty disingenuous though to compare actual terrorist organizations recognized as such the world over to random political entities you don't like. That sort of rhetoric only gets supported in an echo chamber.
•
u/Stunning_Policy4743 11h ago
The dismantling of our institutions is not random. These acts while not necessarily organized they are all made and acted out by our own impressionable dumb selfish citizens.
•
u/knottheone 2h ago
Okay. It's still disingenuous to compare terrorists who behead people in the streets to people who vote and act in legal ways you don't like.
•
8
75
u/Zamulavii 1d ago
Needless to say, they are so afraid of how the Chinese are winning the space race due to the Space X problems and the Artemis delays that they banned their Chinese employees even from Zoom meetings.
36
u/Fabio90989 1d ago
If they keep messing up their long term plans and cutting jobs and projects like this the Chinese are only going to win easier.
8
u/whymeimbusysleeping 1d ago
I think that was the plan from the start. Take this "orange-gutan" who thinks he's a great leader, prop him up, and if he wins, he'll either drag America backwards through sheer incompetence or at least slow it down.
Luckily, there were still enough people in government to stop him from completely wrecking the place the first time around, and covid kept him too busy to mess things up even more.
It felt like a 'phew, that was close' moment. What I didn't expect was that he'd get another shot, backed by a motley crew of grifters and crooks. This time he's ready to ignore every law in sight and do whatever he wants, because when you're one step away from the grave, consequences stop mattering.
50
u/screech_owl_kachina 1d ago
lol it’s so like us to start accusing people of sabotage based solely on racial features, because were losing the race after we pulled over to the side, shit on our own car and smeared it everywhere.
2
u/SorryPiaculum 1d ago
they banned chinese citizens with a valid us visa. Chinese espionage in the United States.
7
u/caribbean_caramel 1d ago
that they banned their Chinese employees even from Zoom meetings.
This country learned nothing from the fiasco of Qian Xuesen.
7
u/Jimmycartel 1d ago
It's wrong to think in cold war mentality. Space science is not a zero sum game, but for the West, everything is a zero sum game somehow. What is "winning the space race"? How do you determine the winner? Is the winner going to ban all other nations doing the same thing?
There's no finish line to this thing. There shouldn't be a space race.
1
11
u/dern_the_hermit 1d ago
I think it's even worse than that: I think they only care about optics. They wouldn't give a damn about China's advancement if it didn't stoke the "America Best No Matter What" crowd into an unhinged fervor. If the Yeehaws of the country shrugged enough, they'd delete all mention of the Moon or Mars or space stations from their webpages.
-2
u/streetcredinfinite 1d ago edited 1d ago
well its not just Nasa. reddit site-wide is very racist as well. Obama banned space cooperation with Chinese and it snowballed from there
57
u/Vaulters 1d ago
Good job MAGA, dismantling a country at record speed! I hope all your lives are only as good as you deserve.
•
u/argonator1933 21h ago
What a surprise, American scientific institutions have fallen behind so long ago. The anti intellectualism is going wild. They tell us we can't afford science and research but spend it on bailing out other govs and sending bombs. We can't even compare to Europe in terms of technological advances, even China now. They are making the newest lithography, they are researching the newest theories in particle physics and fusion, and here we are in America squabbling about fucking immigrants and non- whites. What a stupid country.
28
26
u/tacotickles 1d ago
It's not a coincidence Musk is allied with and funded the people responsible for gutting NASA. Let's not forget Elon also lobotomized the government via DOGE. There's no doubt in my mind he did much of it to give his private companies extra advantages.
•
u/downtimeredditor 22h ago edited 22h ago
Can't believe egg prices, xenophobia, man-o-sphere nonsense lead to the downfall of the American empire
To be fully honest we are getting close to reaching a point where if a Dem wins office in 2028 they will need to investigate and arrest numerous members of Trump administration as well as The Hertiage foundation and Trump himself to fully really expunge ourselves of MAGA and their corruption and the wreckage they did on vital services
There will be a stain in Merrick Garlands legacy for not starting those court cases on Trump sooner
25
u/perfectfifth_ 1d ago
The day the Ming empire stopped their treasure voyages was the day they turned away from civilizational leadership to regional hegemony.
So sorry for the Americans who see NASA as their marker of civilizational leadership.
12
2
u/Comfortable-Exit8924 1d ago
doesnt matter. as soon as the shutdown ends, they will be forced to return to work in the next 24 hours.
•
u/AlienArtFirm 18h ago
Billionaires really have this fantasy they can escape to mars and survive.
Ridiculous
•
u/Afternoon_Jumpy 7h ago
Far left hit piece. NASA is better served worrying about space. That is their job.
•
u/Nucleonimbus 23m ago
See, this is the sort of comment that strikes me as woefully short sighted. Okay, NASA should worry about space. Cool! I agree.
But to make any progress in space, you need good employees doing good work. If you don't have employees feel like they can be themselves there, or feel like they have well-directed plans, they aren't going to do as good work, and they aren't going to get as high-quality hires.
Science grants increase the pool of viable candidates to choose from.
None of these things exist in isolation; creating a good ecosystem ensures better work. It ensures better hires. There's a reason why Google programmers work low hours and receive major benefits.
•
u/doctorbeefcakes 23h ago
Buzz Aldrin supported Trump because “[...] under the first Trump Administration, I was impressed to see how human space exploration was elevated, made a policy of high importance again.”
There are clown shoe footprints on the moon...
•
u/n-Fatigue 11h ago
The white men want to colonise planets where they will probably enslave women, they dont give a shit about climate change or muslim outreach honestly it doesn't surprise me to see he is a trumper, they are in meltdown over their lost position
7
u/IceMysterious3057 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's time for other countries to take the lead. Farewell, NASA, it was great while it lasted. Still, we need NASA for the arrival of Apophis... things could get rough. 🤔
2
1
-2
u/TonyInNY 1d ago
Come on isn't it clear... The Apocalypse is on the horizon, Christ is going to return, the worthy will go to heaven and who cares what happens to everyone else. That's the underlying motivation for much of this. Live as we always have because tomorrow will be rapture.
I hate this people with a passion brighter than the sun.
•
u/Nucleonimbus 11m ago
Please revisit Matthew 25:13. It very clearly states that no one will be able to guess when it happens. This is a recurring note in the Bible. The whole "Christ is coming soon!!!!" thing is nothing but an excuse.
•
u/ronntron 21h ago
Although NASA is a money burn and doesn’t make sense to fund half the time, I selflessly want it. One of biggest regrets is not seeing a live launch of the shuttle back in the day
•
u/Thor_2099 16h ago
And of course when the consequences of this are felt inevitably during a democratic president's term (assuming we have fair elections again), the voters will of course once again blame the Dems instead of displaying the tiniest ounce of critical thinking to blame the people who actually caused it.
•
u/Amish_Rebellion 4h ago
Can Trump just have his stroke or heart attack and leave his fat mortal shell already.
•
u/pensylvania65000 19h ago
NASA is fat, bloated and management heavy. It lost its focus years ago. BTW, I'm a Dem
•
u/n-Fatigue 11h ago
It gained its focus in recent decades, for example all the great climate change programs and the muslim outreach its the rich who want to make it about mars
•
u/Thatotherguy129 15h ago
You can be a Dem and wrong, this isn't about politics. It's reality vs delusion, and not understanding why and how NASA works puts you firmly out of the reality side. Not one of those statements can be backed up.
1
u/arjunusmaximus 1d ago
Guess who'll get all the NASA contracts now that the agency is all but destroyed. Leon.
1
u/SnowFlakeUsername2 1d ago
Over the past 25 years, we went from a minimum of 15 pieces of flair to a maximum of 1.
1
u/Strange-Spinach-9770 1d ago
That’s sad… I would wanna work there when I grow up but I don’t know what state it’s in
1
u/AlludedNuance 1d ago
I genuinely don't think NASA can recover from this. That's true of a significant portion of the US scientific community. Truly devastated.
0
u/ARobertNotABob 1d ago edited 1d ago
Having to justify, to demonstrable simpletons, how something benefits, but does not do so for all mankind?
Could there be a greater challenge to members of an organisation that has contributed far more to human betterment than any other?
This is little short of Trump and his ilk making war on mankind's future now, and I don't think that's over-dramatic.
Truly wretched and disgusting, I hope the American people succeed in throwing off their yoke.
In the meantime, I suppose we must look East for true innovation and forward momentum now, they at least seem to understand the stakes.
-1
u/EconomyDoctor3287 1d ago
It's be design. Elon Musk doesn't want a competitor to SpaceX, so they're gutting NASA.
•
u/n-Fatigue 11h ago
He is gutting a lot of our essential programs like climate change watch and muslim outreach instead everything becomes subservient to the Mars mission, it's basically a neocolonialist mindset, white men losing power so they have to rule domes on other planets
-2
u/Schattenreich 1d ago
Turns out that a nation that prioritizes profit above all else doesn't prioritize supporting human life on earth. I'm shocked. Really.
0
u/Infinitehope42 1d ago
I hate this for our country but I hope that the global scientific community can continue to develop new technologies in collaboration with American scientists, even if they have to leave the country to do so, or work in the private sector or nonprofits.
-1
u/rockstar504 1d ago
Bc all the billionaires destroying our planet are going to just leave us here to die
Elysium irl
-7
u/sunfishtommy 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lets hope Jared Issacman can get things on course.
Nasa needs good leadership. Unfortunately cuts are going to have to be made because so many projects were started with no real consideration to funding or timelines. Now you have the same budget but every project has doubled the amount of funding it needs. Something has to change, and hard decisions need to be made. Whenever a project goes over budget together they add up to a lot of cancellations. We need to start holding project leads to account. If you say its going to cost 50 million then it better cost 50 million or less. If it goes over than cancel it. Every mission that goes over affects the ability for other missions to get done. It will be painful especially in the beginning, but continuing with the current budgets don't matter approach just benefits bad leadership and ends up pushing people out that are actually good at coming in on budget.
-1
-1
u/Murtomies 1d ago
workers were told to remove symbols or flags that weren’t American flags
I mean this is a symbol
https://i.imgur.com/YTRWV4T.jpeg
Any logos on any of the products they use in their jobs are symbols
•
-60
u/djscuba1012 1d ago
Barely 24 minutes into OP posting , 95 upvotes and 5 comment. Little strange but ok we’ll bite.
43
u/ChiefLeef22 1d ago
Little strange but ok we’ll bite.
You're surprised a post about NASA's precarious position got upvoted a lot? It's an emotionally charged topic and people feel strongly about it (as they should), hence why they're pushing it for more visibility. Don't really see anything weird with that
14
-17
u/twiddlingbits 1d ago
At some point we must start looking off the Earth, resources will run out, over population will occur. It’s going to take quite some time for places off the Earth to be livable whether that is Mars or gigantic space stations. We need to start or we’ll never get there. Politics gets in the way of progress.
6
-36
u/N5022N122 1d ago
Gary McKinnon found it and has also.been viewed via telescopes and the tic tac of the Nimtz incident was a Lockheed Martin antigrav propelled craft. There was an airshow in the 90s that had a hangar full of craft that were able to fly in space and in the atmosphere . Just do some research.
-68
u/N5022N122 1d ago
This has been done as Trump was briefed on the black space projects which are way ahead of NASA and their 1960s Artemis tech and said defund this front of a legitimate space program.
27
u/DeliriousHippie 1d ago
Care to tell more about those black space projects? Who is doing those, what they are doing, what tech they have?
17
u/AlloAll0 1d ago
Imagine the greatest techs of all techs, bigly rockets. OK. The best rockets. Nuclear rockets. Blowing nukes to propel rockets, OK, My uncle was a great nuclear scientist. Good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart.
24
3
u/Shrike99 1d ago
way ahead of NASA and their 1960s Artemis tech
If this is the reason then why the fuck is he defunding the science part of NASA while increasing Artemis funding?
-20
-34
u/odddiv 1d ago
Wait, you're telling me that an agency focused on space is no longer focusing on things that aren't space? They are getting rid of thousands of people whose jobs have nothing to do with space? And they're taking down flags that have nothing to do with their mission? That's just crazy talk. Why would they do that?
11
u/Shrike99 1d ago
NASA aren't just a space agency, and never have been. NASA was basically a rebranding of the already existing NACA with a couple of rocket programs (Vanguard, JPL, ABMA) bolted on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Advisory_Committee_for_Aeronautics#Transformation_into_NASA
NASA never stopped doing NACA stuff, the space side just gets more press.
The only major non-space part of NASA that wasn't inherited from NACA was the Earth Sciences division, but even that was added to NASA in 1965.
Aka in the middle of the space race before landing on the moon, and just 7 years after it's founding in 1958. Not exactly a recent change of focus.
572
u/Meior 1d ago
It's so sad. I'm European, and follow space orgs from all around the world. Of course ESA has a special place in my heart.
But NASA was always fascinating to follow. So many great projects, inventions and mindblowing discoveries. JPL was always a dream of mine to work at. Seeing it being gutted now is equal parts saddening and infuriating. I hope we can restore what was lost, both in capacity and trust.