NIST is the US Department of Commerce standards body. ISO is international, and is already private. ISO suffers in commercial adoption by comparison to NIST, because ISO makes money charging for access to its published standards. Anyone seeking standards to adopt will first look at the free ones.

Commercial space has done a lot of innovation in areas where NASA failed to capitalize, but they have also benefited in places from NASA standards for already-solved technical problems. If NASA wants to be a permanent beneficiary of commercial space, especially where interoperability between contractors/providers is important, they need to shift a whole lot more funding toward developing publicly available standards. Standardization has long been starved for funding within NASA, as legacy missions don’t care to fund developing (much less adopting) new standards while upcoming missions care only about baselining them as mission requirements (but by then it’s too late to develop and publish).

Same with MSFC in terms of outward expansion in case SpaceX fails.

EPA and State Department?

Yeah–roast them alive with phosphorus.

The only departments that are needed are the ones that the United States started with:

The Department of Defense, one of the two purposes to have a government: To defend the citizens’ rights from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Could be called the war department.

The Department of Justice, the other purpose to have a government: To peaceably resolve disputes as an indifferent third party while protecting the citizens’ rights.

The Department of the Treasury, needed to operate a government.

The Department of State, needed for a government to interact with foreign nations. Could be called the peace department.

A last function of a free nation’s government is to stay out of the citizens’ way. Why would a people create government if it would enslave the creators?

Government employees were at one time public servants. This lasted a couple of centuries, but then these employees saw themselves as a ruling class, and they saw the people they were hired to serve and to protect as their servants.

A couple of decades ago I was between jobs and at a party talked with a teacher who believed that it was my responsibility to get another job (rather than see myself as an early retiree) just so that I could pay the taxes that paid her salary. No other reason. She saw me as a mere source of money for her to spend. That was an eye opener.

Now I discover that even the underutilized yet talented, skilled, and knowledgable NASA employees no longer see themselves as servants providing the world with advanced technology but as an entitled class, and that we are mere sources of money for them to spend. This is another eye opener. The last group that I trusted in government has succumbed to greed and power.

Our public servants once were rewarded with excellent pensions after a mere twenty-year career, after which they could seek another employment out here in the real world, in the commercial world. But after public servants were allowed to unionize,* they started becoming overpaid with even better retirement benefits, and they stopped retiring after their twenty years, seeing themselves as those entitled rulers of We the People. No wonder so many of todays American governments are so costly.

There are scores, if not hundreds, of new companies starting to do business in space, and they could use the talents, skills, and knowledge that NASA employees have. If NASA is downsized, like many companies, then these people can find or found new space companies.
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* The purpose of unions was to ensure that workers share in profits. Government has no profits, so what was the purpose of government unions? If unions were created to stand up to unfair employers, then unions for government employees must have been created because government was an unfair employer. Unless they were created in order to suck more blood from We the People, the newly forged slaves of the ruling-class-government-employee.

The ATF should be de-fanged. though I could see then changed into an something like underwriters.
They guarantee legal drugs like marijuana for strength and purity.
I would like to see marijuana packaged like cigarettes. Labeled dosage and purity.
As for firearms I could see them approving the design for functionality. But not for type, style or accessories.

I could go on for weeks about what I would like. But I also see the potential troubles with my ideas.

If it’s not shooting (or exploding) or carrying something that is shootable (or explodable) (logistics), it’s out of military budget.
If it’s not in the Constitution, it’s out of the budget.
No NASA.
No DOE (both of them).
No FDA. If you insist, privatize it; “FDA approved” becomes like “Underwriters’ Laboratory approved”.
No USDA (if you insist, privatize the inspections).
No NWS (again, privatize – if people want weather reports, they can pay for them directly)
No CDC (if you can’t trust them, what’s the point?)
No NIH (if no one wants to fund health research, we can all just die young.)
No DoI (why does the federal government run parks?!?! Selling all that land will get rid of the deficit.)

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that weights & measures is important, but what’s up with all the weird screw heads?!? Does anyone even know if they’re doing their job? Has anyone ever confirmed that grocery store scales are accurate? That gas pump gallons are actually a gallon? Doesn’t the ISO set all the standards, these days? Privatize it.

That was off the top of my head. No doubt I’ve missed over half of the unconstitutional departments.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-bidens-delaware-trips-cost-154015131.html

“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”

I dare say Cowing himself is the cause for the cuts.

Imagine, if you will, a couple squabbling in the forest–whose noise attracts a predator that de-alives them both.

That’s what happened.

New Space and Old Space fussed –but MSFC (that Keith considered the Conservative Center) was always Cowing ‘s chief target–since he is a Goddard-hugging climate alarmist.

He wants both Marshall AND SpaceX to die.

I’d prefer they’d join forces.

Ghostbusters (1984)
“Private Sector”
https://youtu.be/RjzC1Dgh17A
(0:59)

Ghostbusters (1984)
“Private Sector”
https://youtu.be/RjzC1Dgh17A
(0:59)

So what job did she have? She was a photographer. She did PR shoots. That was her contribution to space science. Seem to me she has a job that defines fat and not muscle,

Even sadder? This cri de coeur came to my attention because a co-worker (who does actual engineering, too) liked it putting on my notices. The inability of some engineers at NASA to be able to distinguish between what is significant and what is BS is one reason *everything* at NASA comes in late and overbudget.

They act like security guards are supposed to be their waiters and that truck lanes and runways are their personal parking lots. Worse, management will side with the punks against their own security team.

It wouldn’t do for me to get Gary Mitchell powers–for I’d do things to them that would make Vlad the Impaler sick.

None of these protesters or declarations ever propose any alternative suggestions for gaining some control over the federal deficit.

On the one hand, it’s true that the NASA budget is a pretty small slice of the federal budget, and has been for a long time. You can wipe out its entire $25 billion ledger and you are not going to make a major dent in a $1.9 trillion annual budget deficit.

On the other hand, it *is* still part of the federal budget, and it is not inequitable to suggest that every agency and every department should have to make *some* sacrifice. To listen to some NASA peeps (and their supporters) NASA should simply be exempt, because the work it does is so valuable.

The wisdom of some of the cuts proposed aside (we have all discussed these here already in recent week) one thing that weakens the Trump Administration’s stance is that it’s biggest disappointment is that the Big Beautiful Bill leaves the deficit number a whole lot bigger than promised. That is not what Trump had in his own proposal, but he has accepted the BBB as his own now. Obviously, its like herding cats (corrupt cats) to get anything through Congress, but a lot of pork looks to be getting through on the final bill, and some of that pork is even more offensive than certain useless bodies working at Goddard or the Cape.