NASA Nerds... keep your eyes to the sky this evening.

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TomcatMF said:
If we put as much effort into the space program as we do making war, we would have populated the solar system by now.
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NASA has been an easy target for budget cuts for decades. I worked at JSC for a number of years in the 90s and it was sad to watch the manned space program wither on the vine, especially after growing up in Houston during its glory days in the 60s. I had to depart to greener pastures for self-preservation.
 
shoeless said:
NASA has been an easy target for budget cuts for decades. I worked at JSC for a number of years in the 90s and it was sad to watch the manned space program wither on the vine, especially after growing up in Houston during its glory days in the 60s. I had to depart to greener pastures for self-preservation.
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I wish I had stayed, but the contractor of the month (Cimarron, this time) took over our group and cut benefits, etc. Still, I should have stayed. Yeah, it occasionally sucked, but not nearly as bad as big oil and gas corporations, and being a part of NASA was beyond satisfying. Most of the people I worked with eventually got laid off and replaced by fresh-outs to cut salary costs. My ex has been there for 36 years now, transitioning to a federal job from a contractor.
 
I never worked for the space program but did spend five years at the DoD as an auditor and can confidently state that your tax dollars bought a lot of shitty shit and I have no reason to believe it still isn't so. They love to point fingers at the waste in anything that actually helps people but if you try and talk about Pentagon waste you get no traction - everybody knows that the Military Industrial Complex has DC in a tighter grip than even oil...
 
I worked for a company that tried launching a cool way for the intelligence community to save money by auctioning off stuff they bought to use up the budget and never deployed. Of course the govies thought this was madness because it would suggest to Congress that their budgets were too high. The company was effectively blackballed and almost everyone lost their jobs.
 
Tig said:
I wish I had stayed, but the contractor of the month (Cimarron, this time) took over our group and cut benefits, etc. Still, I should have stayed. Yeah, it occasionally sucked, but not nearly as bad as big oil and gas corporations, and being a part of NASA was beyond satisfying. Most of the people I worked with eventually got laid off and replaced by fresh-outs to cut salary costs. My ex has been there for 36 years now, transitioning to a federal job from a contractor.
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I had a similar experience circa '94. The push was to enable minority-owned businesses. I was working for Lockheed at the time and we laid off a bunch of folks, with pre-arranged interviews with one of those contractors. They showed up to work the next day with a new badge, fewer benefits, and loss of seniority and vacation time. Sat in the same desk, doing the same job with fewer perks. I managed to avoid that, but it was clear where we were headed, so I bolted for the commercial world. Last time I was in Clear Lake visiting friends/family a few years back, those buildings were still vacant. Hopefully that's not the case anymore.
 
I've loved it all. I know it's a pork barrel boondoggle, but the excitement of the astronauts and what they're doing and what they're sending home is worth it.

Nevermind that we're blowing a bunch of money on other stuff I don't agree with. . . :annoyed:
 
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