Boeing notifies SLS employees of impending layoffs
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion
Boeing yesterday sent a notice out to its employees working on NASA’s SLS rocket that up 400 could be laid off due to “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.”
Boeing SLS employees were informed Feb. 7 that the company was making preparations to cut up to 400 jobs from the program because of “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.” The specific positions being considered for elimination were not announced but would account for a significant fraction of the overall SLS workforce at the company.
This is probably the most significant update from the entire SLS program since it was first proposed by George Bush Jr in 2004. All other announcements either told us there were going to be more delays, the cost was going up, or there were newly discovered technical problems caused by bad management or sloppy work. This announcement instead actually indicates that NASA management — under pressure from the new Trump administration — is finally addressing these failures after two decades.
In the past few months there have been many indications from the swamp in Washington that it is finally beginning to recognize the absurdity and stupidity of the whole SLS/Orion infrastructure, a realization I outlined in detail fourteen years ago, soon after the project was reshaped from the absurd and stupid Ares project under Bush Jr. to SLS/Orion under Obama.
It took however the arrival of Trump (changed himself from his first administration) to do it. Trump is doing what no president has done in our lifetimes, going through all federal programs and ripping them apart if they are failing to do what they promise. And he is doing it with full and amazingly enthusiastic support of the American people. No one cares that government employees are “crying.” Nor does anyone pay attention any longer to these sob stories, put out by the propaganda press. It have proven itself to be habitual liars whose only interest has been prop up the Washington swamp, and everyone now recognizes it.
Expect a major reshaping of NASA and its entire manned program. We will still be heading to the stars, but finally doing it.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion
Boeing yesterday sent a notice out to its employees working on NASA’s SLS rocket that up 400 could be laid off due to “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.”
Boeing SLS employees were informed Feb. 7 that the company was making preparations to cut up to 400 jobs from the program because of “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.” The specific positions being considered for elimination were not announced but would account for a significant fraction of the overall SLS workforce at the company.
This is probably the most significant update from the entire SLS program since it was first proposed by George Bush Jr in 2004. All other announcements either told us there were going to be more delays, the cost was going up, or there were newly discovered technical problems caused by bad management or sloppy work. This announcement instead actually indicates that NASA management — under pressure from the new Trump administration — is finally addressing these failures after two decades.
In the past few months there have been many indications from the swamp in Washington that it is finally beginning to recognize the absurdity and stupidity of the whole SLS/Orion infrastructure, a realization I outlined in detail fourteen years ago, soon after the project was reshaped from the absurd and stupid Ares project under Bush Jr. to SLS/Orion under Obama.
It took however the arrival of Trump (changed himself from his first administration) to do it. Trump is doing what no president has done in our lifetimes, going through all federal programs and ripping them apart if they are failing to do what they promise. And he is doing it with full and amazingly enthusiastic support of the American people. No one cares that government employees are “crying.” Nor does anyone pay attention any longer to these sob stories, put out by the propaganda press. It have proven itself to be habitual liars whose only interest has been prop up the Washington swamp, and everyone now recognizes it.
Expect a major reshaping of NASA and its entire manned program. We will still be heading to the stars, but finally doing it.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
With every SLS non-event news article that comes out I’ve been wondering what all those SLS employees do all day.
I work in tech and layoffs and downsizings happen all the time. I can’t remember how many I’ve gone through.
In one 5 year span I worked for 4 different companies as the little tech company I worked for was bought by larger and larger companies. I sat in the same desk in the same group as the companies changed around us, but more and more people got laid off in each merger and acquisition. The first groups to get laid off are like HR and legal (usually on the day the deal goes through) because the acquiring company has their own HR and legal departments. The 4th M&A we went through was a holding company that broke up the parts and sold them off so everyone was laid off at that point.
There is a federal law that says a company must give a 90 day warning of a layoff of a certain size. So RIP by May or sooner.
James Street,
Job security has traditionally been one of the main reasons for taking a government job. And, up until now, that has generally been a realized expectation anent government employees.
Democrats, as they have always done, treat government payrolls as pots of patronage with which to reward party loyalists. In recent decades, that patronage network has expanded vastly beyond nominal government employee ranks with the creation and staffing up of countless tax-exempt NGOs that receive government money to do things the Democrats want done, but can’t afford to have government employee fingerprints on – like importing millions of illegals into the US.
DOGE is in the process of defunding all of these Dark State NGOs. It is also paring back the actual government workforce in large measure, including by the outright closure of entire agencies.
Both the Dark State NGOs and the government employees are sources of vast amounts of political contributions to Democrat campaigns. With the NGOs burned to the ground and the federal workforce radically downsized, the public employee unions will diminish in political influence. The DNC will be on much shorter rations than currently which should compromise their ability to hold many electoral offices currently in their column. With diminished influence, the DNC will also find its voluntary donor base shrinking as there will be much less salable influence on offer.
All of these things will, I think, eliminate the ability of the DNC to be nationally competitive with the new MAGA Republican party. The Democrats are – absent the torrents of cash extorted or stolen from US taxpayers via all the mechanisms now being exposed and ended by DOGE – at best a 10 or 15 percent party of coastal elites and fellow travelers. There is a real possibility that the Democratic Party will implode and vanish in the wake of the gut-ripping it’s getting from DOGE. Even if it survives in diminished form, there seems no reason why a Democratic Party, forced to rely on just what resources it can raise legitimately, should bulk any larger on the US political scene than did, say, the Socialist Party in the 1920s and 30s.
So a great many formerly pampered parasites are now finding themselves either already in the water or huddling fearfully together on the tilting decks of their torpedoed agencies and Dark State NGOs. For most, it is likely to be the most trying of times they have ever faced. As someone who has been on government payrolls only in part-time, short-term, non-career-track jobs while in school – and who has also found himself in the water numerous times when various of his private sector “ships” have foundered or hit rough weather – I can’t say I’m finding it possible to flog up much sympathy.
Having worked for well over a dozen firms in my time, only two of which, to my knowledge, still continue in business – both diminished from passing through the business climate storms that washed me overboard from both places – it seems we have had broadly comparable “careers” – if one may use such a term. The world of 50-years-and-a-gold-watch with a single employer, to the extent it ever existed at all, was certainly on final fade-out as I was getting started. If you are much younger than me, it was gone entirely by the time you started out.
The only real exception was in the realm of government employment. Now the employment turbulence the rest of us have had to contend with in the routine course of existence has come to government service as well. None too soon IMHO.
Boeing peeps on X have said that the employee briefing was given remotely over Zoom, by script, lasting only a few minutes, that no questions were taken, and that morale is so low that you would probably need an SRDRS to rendezvous with it.
Well, I hope they all land on their feet, working on some actually useful aerospace hardware, unless they’re pension eligible.
The Boeing suits won’t be hurt one jot….that alone has my blood pressure up.
“Well, I hope they all land on their feet,” – Richard M
Many won’t, at least not in the way they hope. The U.S. job market is flooded with immigrants, legal and illegal.
For example you no longer hear the phrase “high paying tech job”. It’s common to see tech job advertisements requiring a 4 year degree in Computer Science and 2+ years’ experience starting at $50,000. And there are people who take them, mostly immigrants here on H-1B work visas. If they lose a job they have 6 months to find a new job or they have to leave the U.S.
“Hey friend listen, I know the world is scary right now but
It’s gonna get way worse”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/MAGA-Going-to-Get-Worse.jpeg