JPL lays off 100 contractors due to expected budget cuts
JPL last week laid off 100 contractors due to expected budget cuts in its troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.
A JPL spokesperson confirmed Jan. 7 that the center laid off the contractors and took other measures, such as across-the-board spending cuts and pausing work on one aspect of MSR, because of the “uncertain federal budget” in fiscal year 2024. The Los Angeles Times first reported the layoffs.
NASA announced in November that it would slow down work on MSR because of sharp differences in proposed funding for the effort in separate House and Senate bills. A House appropriations bill would provide the agency’s full request of $949.3 million while the Senate version allocated only $300 million.
Since the final budget has not been determined, nor has NASA made any decisions on what will happen to the sample return mission, these cuts (as well as NASA’s slowdown in November) are as much a political act as anything. JPL and NASA are trying to pressure Congress to fully fund everything, and by imposing cuts now the agencies generate news that elected officials don’t like. Routinely the legislators then back off of any budget cuts.
We shall see. Congress remains bankrupt, treating its budget as a blank check with money that grows on trees. Yet the sample return mission as presently designed is a mess. It needs a major reshaping in every way.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
JPL last week laid off 100 contractors due to expected budget cuts in its troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.
A JPL spokesperson confirmed Jan. 7 that the center laid off the contractors and took other measures, such as across-the-board spending cuts and pausing work on one aspect of MSR, because of the “uncertain federal budget” in fiscal year 2024. The Los Angeles Times first reported the layoffs.
NASA announced in November that it would slow down work on MSR because of sharp differences in proposed funding for the effort in separate House and Senate bills. A House appropriations bill would provide the agency’s full request of $949.3 million while the Senate version allocated only $300 million.
Since the final budget has not been determined, nor has NASA made any decisions on what will happen to the sample return mission, these cuts (as well as NASA’s slowdown in November) are as much a political act as anything. JPL and NASA are trying to pressure Congress to fully fund everything, and by imposing cuts now the agencies generate news that elected officials don’t like. Routinely the legislators then back off of any budget cuts.
We shall see. Congress remains bankrupt, treating its budget as a blank check with money that grows on trees. Yet the sample return mission as presently designed is a mess. It needs a major reshaping in every way.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Congress ……. treating its budget as a blank check with money that grows on trees.
My late Austrian grandmother had a more colorful description of that money source:
Geld sheister
Ha!