NASA’s budget is getting slashed.
NASA is terminating $420 million in contracts the agency says are redundant or “misaligned” with its core priorities, but has provided few details about what is being cut.
In a statement to SpaceNews late March 24, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens confirmed a post by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that NASA had terminated about $420 million in “unneeded” contracts.
The question I have is…how much of that $420 million in contracts was going to SpaceX, which is run by Elon Musk, who is also running DOGE?
Much corruption, so respect.
I’m going way out on a limb here, but my wild guess would be that none of that $420 million in contracts affects SpaceX, StarLink, or any other Musk related business.
I’m sure the $420 million was what they found was unnecessary, and absolutely not an arbitrary amount chosen for the lulz.
@ 2
Broccoli-Headed Teenage Incel: “Yeah man, we found (snicker) four-twenty million dollars (laughing, whispering)… Shut up, man! Shut up!… (normal) and we reduced it by (laughing) SIXTY NINE PERCENT, DUDE!”
My guess would be that the “unneeded” contracts were with SpaceX and StarLink competitors.
lol Akira
Next announcement will be that all cancelled contracts are reassigned to SpaceX
100% is going to Musk. The fix is firmly in the henhouse.
It will go to Musk because financing a one-way trip to Mars is more important than anything real scientists and engineers would do in space.
I meant the fox is firmly in the henhouse.
kayden @ #9 — I thought “The fix is firmly in the henhouse” was perfect myself.
Folk, Musk doesn’t really need anything to go to SpaceX. He wants to get his massive tax cut so he can sell off his sinking Tesla stock. Why would he care about a few million going to his company when he can literally pocket billions after tax cuts?
Air Force Will Soon Test Shipping Cargo Via SpaceX Rockets
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@11 lotharloo
Sure, tax cuts are everything, but I’m going to push back against “sinking Tesla stock”. While it’s true that it has taken a dive from its value around Christmas, that was the peak following a dramatic rise after the election. Currently, the stock is around where it was in October, and higher than it was one year ago. Of course, seeing how the brand has become toxic to the very people who would be most likely to buy an EV, and that no “respectable” magat would ever consider buying an EV (in spite of the recent advert from the White House), the current slide may continue unabated (no doubt there would be some cheering for a multi-billion dollar self-own).
@12 RS
No surprises there, and it would be expected fallout to push rural users (a large chunk of their base) to a lower performance platform. I can see them out on the rooftops clearing off the snow from the dishes in winter, and wondering why the latency is so high when compared to the FO networks used in the cities.
And rockets instead of C-17s? Really?
Hi, Professor Myers.
Maybe I am missing the button or is there any other easy way to share your posts to Bluesky? I’m in the process of unwinding my Meta accounts so there and LinkedIn are going to be my only social media accounts going forward.
[drsteve, no. You have to copy/paste into your app, because the template here is old and not very extensible (it does Twitter!) and Bluesky is newish]
420 seems an important number given:
https://missouriindependent.com/2025/03/19/repub/how-trump-carved-a-pathway-for-his-mass-deportations-through-executive-orders/
Maybe April 20th being Hitler’s birthday is but an odd coincidence. Some are reading even more into this deadline:
https://www.mind-war.com/p/martial-law-on-420
@ ^
https://observer.com/2024/04/elon-musk-number-420-tesla-twitter/
@ 16 Morales
Utter nonsense. Of course the plugins exist, and it is trivial to add them to the post template. Job for Hornbeck (or whoever).
https://socialmediaforlearning.com/2024/11/24/wordpress-tips-adding-a-bluesky-sharing-button/
Silentbob, total truth. There is no such button. There is one for Twitter.
That was the question.
I’m pretty sure it ain’t gonna be as trivial as adding a line of code, but hey, maybe it’s just that easy and PZ is being a slacker. Or whoever, they’re being slackers.
But hey, maybe it is indeed a trivial fix, and PZ is just a slacker.
If anything happens on April 20th it will be because that’s pot day, and not because of any connection to Hitler. Musk is the kind of 50 something juvenile to reference pot to please the eternally juvenile section of his fandom.
And that cargo rocket idea? Nothing new. Either my brother or I had some sort of book about the future written in the late ’70s, possibly one of the books put out by Usborne. One of the pieces of future tech mentioned was a suborbital military rocket that could deliver commandos anywhere in the world in 90 minutes.
And those commandoes would spend a good several minutes as sitting ducks wafting gently to the ground under three big honking huge parachutes.
There’s a reason paratroopers aren’t used much in actual practice, and it applies to this as well.
What, a shuttle-like spaceplane? Yeah, and phone up the enemy and politely ask them to clear a runway.
Plus any reasonably technically capable adversary will be tracking them from shortly after launch, just as we can track nukes.
Oh, and then there’s the minor matter that nobody will be able to tell whether the rocket is carrying troops or a nuke. (Or cargo!) And an adversary that cares about, at the very least, avenging itself will have to assume it’s a nuke, and act accordingly.
That scheme is just made of stupid all around, as is the Musk cargo-rocket one. Even in a peaceful world where no one would think it could be a nuke that’s on the way, I can’t see this being anything but hugely wasteful for any but the most acutely latency-sensitive and super-scarce cargoes, which category is pretty much limited to “live organs for transplant” at this time. Maybe if someone with a rare tissue type matched a donor halfway around the world who’d just been hit by a car, but no similar case that was more local, or something.
Who wrote the story you found the troop-carrier ICBM in, anyway? It wasn’t Pournelle, by any chance, was it? <smh>