- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
At least 2,145 senior-ranking NASA employees are set to leave under a push to shed staff, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — potentially spelling trouble for White House space policy and depriving the agency of decades of experience.
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Why are we doing this? Government agencies shouldn’t be run like a company beholden to shareholders who supposedly want to pinch pennies.
Well, you have a shitty businessman as a leader. Has wrecked all his businesses and still running off daddies money with the MAGA grift. Not surprising sadly.
It’s literally muscle memory for him. So sad to see all of this being eroded before our very eyes.
We all know why. Trump and his handlers (Thiel, Heritage, Musk, etc.) want to "reduce [the federal government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” They want to privatize everything so that they can make more money off of these necessary services. It’s always just been about the class war that the ultra wealthy have been perpetrating on us.
They need to face justice.
Putin above all of them too
They’re being handled by enemies of the country and told they’ll profit off the wreckage, that’s why.
Even worse, if it were, NASA would be the last place to cut.
NASA actually sees a return on investment.
You know, one of the modern problems is we aren’t investing nearly enough public funds into R&D. Like 90% of 20th century American technological investment came from Bell Labs and public research.
Bell could invest a lot in research because they had money and weren’t concerned with competition. One of the benefits of being a protected monopoly.
In retrospect, it’d be nice to have had the money without having the monopoly.
I don’t know the numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if any FAANG is bigger than Bell was at its peak. But they aren’t really monopolies to the level Bell was, so they keep most of what they develop and learn as proprietary/internal.
Edit to add: you know what country is putting a lot of public money behind R&D and subsidizing future industries? How do you think this will play out in 20 years? Chinas playing the long game and we are destroying decades of institutional knowledge for tiny quarterly gains. Absurd.
Are you saying monopolies drive innovation? I must not be understanding what you’re saying.
Kindof? I guess that’s a corollary. What I’m saying is that despite being objectively larger and more successful companies, they don’t have nearly the innovation we got from the collaborative efforts of US (i.e. DARPA) and Bell’s research.
It demonstrated that looking out on a very long timeline…decades, if not longer…and investing on projects that won’t show any returns for just as long…if ever…but it can reap massive rewards for everyone.
But…capitalism…pure capitalism…only allows that through monopolies. Which of course is their own can of worms.
Regulated capitalism is just as bad, if not even worse, because there is no incentive for companies to work together on a long enough timeline for it to matter. It results in everything being measured on a quarterly/yearly scale and expecting immediate results, while also disincentivizing publishing or any other dissemination of knowledge
Hence it falls on the government to bankroll these things through grants.
I was curious so I asked ChatGPT. The answer was surprising…all of them tower over Bell by nearly every financial measure…
Was Any Company Bigger Than Bell at Its Peak?
Short answer: Yes — by some metrics. But Bell was unique.
📡 Bell System at Its Peak
The Bell System (AT&T and its regional Bell companies) was a government-regulated telecom monopoly until its breakup in 1984.
- Revenue (early 1980s): ~$70–80B/year
→ ~$220–250B today, inflation-adjusted - Employees: Over 1 million
- Market Cap (est.): ~$100–150B in 1980s
→ ~$300–400B today - Market Share: ~90% of U.S. phone service
- R&D: Bell Labs (invented transistor, UNIX, lasers, info theory, etc.)
In short: Bell controlled the entire U.S. telecom backbone and set the pace for global innovation.
🦷 Big Tech Today (as of 2025)
Company Market Cap Revenue (TTM) Employees Apple ~$3.5T ~$420B ~150,000 Amazon ~$2T ~$600B ~1.5 million Alphabet ~$2.5T ~$370B ~180,000 Microsoft ~$3.5T ~$300B ~220,000 Meta ~$1.3T ~$140B ~65,000 - All exceed Bell’s revenue and market cap, even adjusted for inflation.
- Amazon rivals Bell’s employee count, but largely due to warehouses and delivery.
🧠 Influence Comparison
Category Bell System FAANG & Friends Revenue ~$220–250B (adj.) ✅ Yes (Apple, Amazon, etc.) Market Cap ~$300–400B (adj.) ✅ Yes (multiple > $2T) Employees ~1M ✅ Amazon (~1.5M) Infrastructure Control National telecom monopoly ❌ No – rely on existing infra Scientific Legacy Bell Labs (transistor, UNIX) ❌ Unmatched in corporate R&D Monopoly Power Legally enforced monopoly ❓ De facto dominance (ads, data, AI)
🧾 TL;DR: Is Anyone “Bigger”?
By market value and revenue? ✅ Yes
By number of employees? ✅ Amazon
By influence on infrastructure, science, and policy? ❌ No — Bell was foundationalBell wasn’t just a company — it was the nervous system of American communication.
- Revenue (early 1980s): ~$70–80B/year
Too late. They are thinking like that. They’re for smaller governments. Who the fuck voted for this idiot? Nothing like idiot Fed Employees saying, “I DiDn’T vote FoR tHiS.”
I’m taking the stance that Putins got some dirt on him, or he’s being held hostage via assassins. We all saw how close he was assassinated. Definitely russian special ops with how precise that shot was. No way would anyone like him be able to get in normally without external help, and no one sane would try to dismantle the US Gov’t from the inside. Notably he’s doing it with such efficiency - can’t be a moron & get into office AND be dumb enough to dismantle the govt like he is. BRICS even got Elon helping to take the govt down; and now they’re forcing them to create a 3rd party to destroy the US political system…
…Or they’re just fucking idiots
this is putins goal, destabalize the us agencies, so they cant concentrate on russian internal and foreign politics. gepolitics,
Those 2,145 employees, in turn, make up the bulk of the 2,694 civil staff who have agreed to leave NASA under a slate of offer
Sounds like civil staff was top heavy and voluntary separation packages were offered. Those that accepted and NASA also agreed on would’ve been redundant (or close to it) positions already.
If you couldn’t get your project properly funded and found out $400M a year goes to legacy senior civil staff, you’d want them gone too.
I guess NASA’s contribution to battery technology, satellite crop analysis and improved ventilators (that were used during COVID) weren’t enough impact in the last couple years
But we need to have more gas cars, climate change isn’t real, and COVID never happens just like Epstein Island so get that woke shit outta here NASA is a myth to protect the Jewish space chemtrails, obviously.
Checkmate libtard /s
Because who needs advancements that benefit all of humanity?
\s
Well I sure as hell don’t want no brown people getting them ben-ee-fits! - Some Stupid Fucking MAGAt
If any of those people are reading this, what are you going to do now?
They’ll probably go to the private sector, or land a job at a foreign space agency like ESA.
Oh wow the private sector hmm who could that be a gift to let me see
If this news gets enough traction at Hacker News to reach the front page, you might have better luck asking your question there.
We had an exe NASA employee who recently left for a better opportunity and she was awesome at everything. …we’ll be looking for a NASA person who might fit the bill.
There is way more than that. I think 2900. They have until the end of the month to decide to take early retirement.
I hope they continue their work in a country that deserves their contributions to the advancment of science and humanity as a whole.
Now we’ll never know if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space!
I appreciate the Simpsons reference, but my god not everything has to be a joke all the time. NASA being gutted is a travesty for everyone in every country.
