- I like the rolling Moon animation very much.
- This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during a budget squeeze, presumably with the hope that some of those they attract will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again. I guess it's also a neat kind of try-before-you-buy for both sides. NASA is prestigious and one of the very few places one could do purely science-focused aerospace engineering, but it's still a government job under all the gold leaf and atomic robots.
EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.
In fact, a bunch of NASA labs were recently closed where folks with this exact skillset could do these exact jobs. Why re-post under a different skin and expect a different result?
There are all these 30-60 year old engineers who look like they should be good hires on paper, but the tech economy has been pooping out bullshit products (and jobs) for the last 20 years. The last "real" job I had... my official role was to sit at a desk and "coordinate" development. While no one was looking, I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) My job at Amazon was similar... the higher up the food chain you went, the less management understood what engineers did (modulo a few notable exceptions -- the guy who ran Route 53 when it launched was amazingly tech saavy for a VP level manager.)
There's only so much idiocy you can expect the tech industry to digest. It's time to send engineers to the government so they can write documents about how we should evaluate the requirements for evaluation criteria.
...usually it's the other way around.
May I ask what the situation was? Reverse-outsourcing by the Indian central government?
If you go in expecting you can do nothing and you can’t change the world around you then congrats, you will succeed in all you do.
they may have trimmed some fat, which is normal and necessary, but it's disingenuous to say that "engineers were vilified"
It's not a meritocracy right now. Good people were fired based on their identity alone.
You can always tell when someone is embarrassed to defend something (especially hurting people), when they have to mask it in ambiguous, impassive terms and stale euphemisms.
He didn't fire thousands of good people, human beings who have to worry about putting food on the table now, for purely ideological reasons, while vilifying them as "woke", unqualified, doing work not worth doing (only to open the same positions back up now, because it turns out it was). No, he just "trimmed the fat".
Oh, did people get hurt? Did we waste money and lose expertise for nothing? No, we just "trimmed the fat". Gotta "trim the fat", right? "Trimming the fat" is normal and necessary, and if I say something is just "trimming the fat", that's all it is.
>> will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again
2026 budget - 24.4 billion
2025 budget - 24.8 billion
2024 budget - 25.3 billion
2023 budget - 25.3 billion
2022 budget - 24.0 billion
2021 budget - 23.2 billion
2020 budget - 22.6 billion
2019 budget - 21.5 billion
2018 budget - 20.7 billion
2017 budget - 19.6 billion
2016 budget - 19.2 billion
What part of these numbers are you interpreting as some sort of insane budget restriction?
2026 White House proposed budget[2]: $18.8 billion
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/budget...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...
[2] is represented as deltas, explainer here https://spacenews.com/white-house-budget-proposal-would-phas...
So, probably that squeeze?
Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to try it out, wish it supported iOS.
There's a joke in the aero world that F-16s are designed by people Ph.D.'s, manufactured by people with Masters degrees, flown by people with a Batchelor's degree in History and maintained by people with a High School Diploma.
It turns out you have to make jobs for people at all levels of education and experience.
But in reality they do significant amounts of directed research using "burden" funded research for their on internal needs, and grant work for NASA and other agencies (like DOE).
I worked at JPL, and worked with folks at Ames for various reasons. Both centers try to carve out enough internal time to research new mission concepts, new ways of accomplishing existing mission concepts, or new basic technologies that have dual use for missions/commercial appliations. All of this would qualify as basic research similar to what would happen at Caltech or Stanford, the nearby official/unofficial partners.
I attended all kinds of conferences and agency-level meetings with researchers from many other agencies / nasa centers as well, all mostly aimed at finding out how to better explore space (new missions), or improve our existing exploration capabilities, either with new or by adapting existing tech.
NASA has an entire reporting pipeline called "New Technology Reports" that makes all of this research immediately public, and a deep tradition of spinning off commercial businesses to carry it forward if it turns out to be a good idea.
While I can't comment on the cost per say, there are both military and capitalistic reasons for the race to the moon.
- Logistics Hub
- "Get there quickly and set legal precedent"
- Resource extraction (helium-3, gold, platinum, etc)
- If moon dust can be converted to oxygen reliably, the first company or country to set up shop on the moon can sell that service to countries and commercial entities.
- Unique manufacturing and science activities because of the low gravity
- "Space Tourism"
They all deserve criticism, but when that's all a thread turns into when these items come up, well the discussion becomes very hollow and partisan really quickly.
So, humans that are extremely upset with the current state of things.
> and do it to farm points
I'm sure some do, but have you seen how many people across the US have been having protests? People are pissed.
I'm pretty sure your analysis of the motivations would not at all be accurate with such a blanket statement.
If it's a human getting up and rushing to to write about promoted ragebait content devolving a forum into an echo chamber, of course someone takes the bait and lists grievances in hysterical language unsolicited. Such emotionality is totally uncalled for on a tech forum, and proves my point.
Only when the robots fully take over. It's one of many things that separate us from the machines. Dismissing emotions is dismissing humanity.
However "Finally deleting the worthless penny" is not a big achievement and so it's understandable that you mistook "Trump constantly does incredibly bad things nobody likes" for them disapproving universally of all US Federal government activity.
I don’t know enough about the current NASA administration so it isn’t a criticism toward them. But it roles up to the top.
Just like if I were in the medical field - why would I work for the CDC now?
It's always hard to get tell with you people whether your attempt at trolling is based on willful ignorance, maliciousness or immaturity. Probably all three.
Pre-sorting all criticism as reflexive and not necessarily justified is a rationalization for you not trying to understand other perspectives.
Edit: it seems like my message was ambiguous. Fuck Donald Trump, I’ve got a bottle to pop when he dies and I’ll never let you fuckers live down what you’ve done.
Why bother? Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore, and the American government can't be trusted to fund it properly, or to not rewrite or defund research because of wrongthink or "DEI."
If I were working for NASA, or even a possible candidate for working for NASA, I'd get my passport in order and look for greener pastures. Sure, the pay may not be the best but at least you aren't working for Nazis and pedophiles who believe in space demons and miasma theory.
(oops I did a cynicism.)
That's not cynicism, that's... something else.
The new National Design Studio that replaced the USDS does not seem to be capable of building a website that is accessible, performant, and not overly bombastic / hyperbolic.
Completely unreadable. Animation fails at the top, on a decently provisioned Mac laptop with 16GB of RAM.
Either way - it's unfortunate that the Technology Fellows, GSA, and other programs that brought folks into industry for roles exactly like this were unceremoniously destroyed in quite cruel and silly ways. Why would I apply for this? Fool me once...
>technologists inside the systems that power American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery. You work on real missions, alongside the teams building them, and your contributions move from concept to operation. For a few days, access is granted to this work. The number is extremely limited. The window only lasts four days. Will you answer the call?
You work on real missions, alongside the teams building them
OK alongside, but not ON, the teams building them? So apparently not actually building them myself? And also, does anyone build missions, or do they perhaps build systems?
For a few days, access is granted to this work.
Access is granted to whom? And to what work, the work I'll supposedly be doing? Hopefully yeah I have access to my own work. Or do you mean the work of the people alongside whom I'll be working on missions (the builders of the missions that is)?
The number is extremely limited.
What number?
The window only lasts four days.
Oh now there's a window analogy too. And they already said "a few days" so one of the two is redundant.
There's some way this is enshittified.
Am I an idiot or does their leading sentence make absolutely no sense?
Though its an odd choice that they run it in with the paragraph of normal text rather than making that a heading. Of course, with a four day hiring window its a website that exists as pro forma evidence that there was a public website about the hiring effort, the people actually intended to be hired were almost certainly notified in advance out of band, so there probably wasn't a whole lot of effort put into this.
"NASA Force: Technologists inside the systems that power American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery".
Here's an almost identical one (design-wise): https://genesis.energy.gov/
And another one: https://techforce.gov/
And another one: https://safedc.gov/
All basically the same one-pager with different vibe-coded graphics and like 500 words of text.
Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees?
I'd love to work for Nasa, but I live in Portland, OR. Does this geo basically disqualify me from ever joining Nasa?
And the pay range for the aerospace engineer is okayish, but it's not really out-competiting more senior tech folks in any capacity.
is somewhere in that word salad. I think it's an internship?
Either it's "We're hiring ~1000 IT/Engineering specialists across multiple domains" or it's "Hey, just apply on USAJobs for the open positions".
Otherwise it just feels like throwing an application into the black hole of some kafkaesque talent management system.
i doubt it's that great, NASA is a huge government organization. There may be a handful of people/teams doing cool things but I suspect much of it is infuriating slow and bureaucratic. However, it's probably a good place to retire from if you're willing to put in the 30-40 years.
Yes. And it always did since the 1950s unless you were interested in relocating.
Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that too in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.
> Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees
Not all industries need SWEs who are CRUD monkeys. And your assumption deeply underestimates how most Aerospace and Mechanical Engineers know how to develop at a CS level now as well - most MechE and Aerospace undergrad programs now see their students double major or minor in CompE or CS.
I have no doubt that modern engineering students have CS know-how. It's almost a requirement for the modern world. But I was curious if there were roles for things like simulation, embedded software, etc. or even general scientists that may not fall under traditional engineering. This was mainly conditional on the website's approach to vaguity.
Maybe my idea of NASA was too encompassing. I figured that, apart from the engineering work, general sim would require optimizations and productionalization similar to how we have AI Engineers focused on the practical implementation of ML systems apart from the core model R&D.
I got a bit hooked on Econ for awhile which held my attention through an MS, which is when I learned about computers and then applied that into DS and development.
Most of my simulation experience is in stochastic systems and modern digital twins where agents sometimes have asymmetric information. I can see how I'm of no practical use to NASA now, but it still stings. What a bummer existing and not doing anything cool with life. A warning to youth!
For languages: SAS in undergrad econ/Matlab for math classes, STATA primarily in grad school, and I pivoted to R and then python when I hit industry.
I'd argue your background is extremely valuable, but not easily traversible to NASA at the moment.
If you are deeply interested in the space, working with the newer startups in geospatial/hyperspectral imaging (be it climate or defense usecases) or CV space.
In a lot of cases, NASA is basically just acting as a coordinator between multiple vendors who are doing "the cool stuff" with less bureaucratic minutiae and stress from what's going on in DC.
Lots of interesting players in the ClimateTech and DefenseTech space who would like your background, and indirectly or directly they all work with NASA anyhow.
I wasn't really looking for a change; I have 1 and 3 year olds and am fully remote, and the flexibility with sicknesses is really a benefit. I think it was mostly a shock to my system that I may never do anything "cool" with my life.
That's largely a Mechanical Engineering, Applied Math, and Applied Physics subfield now, not computer science. Most CS majors don't even know what an IVP is, let alone PDEs, nonlinear simulation, etc.
Most CS programs no longer require numerical methods and analysis classes which are critical for this as well as other adjacent subfields like AI/ML theory.
> embedded software
That's a computer engineering and MechE subfield now. Most CS programs don't require OS classes anymore let alone embedded programming.
> even general scientists that may not fall under traditional engineering
The job posting on USAJobs is clear. And most people who are serious about working in the space also know how federal hiring works.
> That's a computer engineering and MechE subfield now.
Do you mean EE subfield? I don't know many ME's working on embedded software.
Aerospace can be done remotely. I was working remotely as an aerospace engineer before the pandemic.
Portland has a 1 million sq ft Boeing factory and dozens of other aerospace companies.
I think you're about to find out in the next few years how much work it takes to develop a moon base and that dismissing those people as "monkeys" is absurd.
NASA force technologists inside the systems that power American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery.
This is so strange.. I'm still not even clear on what it's for..
Intern project?
Windows by any chance?
So, yeah.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-2026-budget-proposal...
Casey Dreier and the Planetary Society drove the halt to last year's proposed NASA science gutting insanity. Please help them do it again. There are things us normies can do about this 2026 proposed inefficiency.
An exploding job-recruitment offer might not attract the kind of folks we want designing a system that absolutely must work after a decade in space.
I've worked with NASA and ESA employees/contractors who've made technical miracles happen in space. I don't think any of them would be drawn to this style of recruitment.
This is a call for developers of the very long tail of logistics related stuff. I'd imagine a moon base would need someone to write the software for schedulers, dashboards, etc. and engineer the parts that interface with and provide non-critical telemetry to those systems. I'm not saying that stuff isn't hard, but it's not anything life or death.
Some of those roles might not even be technical at all and be more about coordinating the human side of those efforts.
First hire should a verb.
The developer of this scroll-smoothing JS library [1] has a lot to answer for.
> I have 1 year of directly related specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-13 level in the Federal service that included: Performing program/project management of space, aeronautical flight systems or experimental aircraft/aircraft systems that involve planning, researching, designing, developing, testing and evaluating, or completing cost analyses; Analyzing, designing, or operating space flight systems, aeronautical flight systems, experimental aircraft/aircraft systems, or structures operating throughout the earth's atmosphere; Developing requirements and integrating aerospace or flight/ground systems (e.g., payloads, hardware/software, scientific instruments, communication equipment, cargo, or any other specialized equipment).
I have the specific Computer Science/Engineering degree they spell out in length in one question (30 credit hours CS, 16 credit hours math/calculus/stats) so I feel like that gives me a chance on top of the narrow window.
Glad I skipped ahead on the optional essay section. YOLO.
Ah yes, that 'waste of times' having to learn things in aeronautics and physics..
Charitably they're moving fast, but without already having people in mind for the roles or having created the hiring pipeline, how do you reach a sufficiently large audience. Is there an explanation I'm missing? Was this announced a while ago?
Makes it feel like they already know who they want for the roles/preferential selection. On a longer or recurring timescale, seems like a cool way to reach out to potential hires.
They specify early to mid career. Imo they're anticipating a ton of applications and bounding it makes reviewing them tractable.
That on top of Direct Hire Authority.
I can see NASA Force[1] is part of the US Tech Force[2] push and has been talked about for the last several months.
[1]:https://www.meritalk.com/articles/nasa-opm-kick-off-drive-fo...
[2]:https://meritalk.com/articles/opm-launches-us-tech-force-to-...
You know how (scheduled, ie you buy tickets to SF, no prior relation to the crew, money for a service) aviation is incredibly safe? Well, one way you can continue increasing safety when you've already fixed all the things which keep going wrong enough that they happened and you corrected for them, is collect incidents where things didn't go wrong.
But obviously no pilot is going to just say "I nearly killed everybody" in public 'cos that's career ending, so ASRS collects these reports anonymously and in fact promises you immunity for certain things if you reported them first. So they can see e.g. sure nobody ever died on a plane because a pilot pushed the "kill everybody" button on the new Boeing cost-optimised "It's probably fine" B123-Extra but here are six reports from pilots who pushed "kill everybody" but were able to push "Whoops, no don't do that" in the six seconds left to prevent it. So this means no the FAA should not approve Boeing's request to remove the "unnecessary" Whoops button from future models and actually maybe the FAA OK for the "kill everybody" button should be revisited 'cos it doesn't say anything about pilots pressing it easily by accident in Boeing's request...
If you looked at https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ and thought, wow this webpage must 25 years old, you would be incorrect! In 2000, they had a very 1990s website with the option for a flash version and non-flash version: https://web.archive.org/web/20000407212204/http://asrs.arc.n...
The early versions of this design arrived in 2008, though it has a sweet sweet flash header complete with audio until 2021.
An even more irrelevant side note: it appears that archive.org has a javascript based flash emulator built in to run old flash websites, which is pretty amazing.
One of my customers right now is frustrated because they have the tower closed at weird hours at their principle base of operations and they can't depart flights conveniently because of staffing shortages. Clearances are a bitch too... the whole thing is kind of wild and it's kind of a safety hazard when this airport goes uncontrolled. Anything that would help out - even cameras that would let the tower controllers at the primary airport see WTF is happening at the satellite field would be helpful...
Maybe they could try a pilot program somewhere like LGA?
AI tooling to provide traffic advisories when there are critical staffing shortages would be a godsend in some parts, and they don't necessarily need to even remotely be close to provide some help.
Obviously, that's not going to work at Teterhole or LGA, but the air traffic system is more than just the east coast. There's tons of staffing shortages across the whole country.
My first thought is, "we should hire more controllers and pay them better" - but if we're not going to do that or if we can't recruit and train fast enough (we can't really), some automation would be good.
the space part gets the most attention
Which links to: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/sKWkWfp
Would anyone like to do some citizen journalism and see if the Constant Contact data handling is done above-board. I've done some Claude research -- enough to make me suspicious -- but I Am Not A Lawyer.
But can we really rule out it being part of such a strategy?
What? This sounds like a phishing email from before phishing emails got good.
Wait till there’s a new administration. Vote for sanity first. Then let government stabilize. Then join. Not now.
Being no fan of the current administration and its hangers-on, my brain quickly jumps to less flattering reasons for these short time windows. A four day application window favors people they want to select. They may well have told certain people in advance to be ready. I don't have direct "proof" of this, and I'm open to learning more, but the current administration has beyond exhausted any presumption of fair dealing.
I encourage anyone and everyone interested to apply and report back. NASA has a good mission and its needs people with a moral backbone and intrinsic pro-science drive.
Claude:
The National Design Studio (NDS) is a new White House agency that Trump created by executive order on August 21, 2025, as part of an initiative called "America by Design." It lives inside the White House Office of the Executive Office of the President.
The setup
The executive order established the NDS along with a new position: Chief Design Officer of the United States
Trump appointed Joe Gebbia (Airbnb co-founder) as the first Chief Design Officer
Gebbia previously worked at DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) alongside Elon Musk on modernizing federal retirement paperwork
The stated goal: overhaul roughly 26,000 federal websites and physical government interfaces to be "both usable and beautiful" — Gebbia has compared the target experience to "the Apple Store"
Initial results are required by July 4, 2026 (the US 250th anniversary), and the temporary organization within NDS is scheduled to sunset after three years
Wow, gee wiz. I can’t wait to synergize in real time for action oriented solutions.
/s
This website feels like an HR person asked Claude to make a website. If you’re swayed by a simple website, you’re not high caliber talent.
That just feels disrespectful to the reader when what you expect me to read may or may not have been a single prompt.
That said if this bothers you I highly recommend not looking up how many Space Shuttle missions are classified.
From wikipedia. The white house is pushing for major cuts to Nasa
Edits (in case my meaning above is not clear):
1. When I write "but we want the opposite to be true" I mean this: if only Trump-aligned or Trump-tolerant people sign up for these roles, I do not think this is desirable for NASA.
2. When I write "I understand the spirit of this comment (and I get it)" I mean: from an individual point of view, I fully grant that many people would be better off seeking work elsewhere.
3. My experience and scientific research shows that people are not merely selfish actors. While individual incentives matter a lot, perhaps even predominantly, it isn't accurate to claim that we can fully explain human behavior with exclusively narrow individualist framings.
4. Many of us act selfishly much of the time, and this is indeed reasonable and even beneficial at times. But taken to an extreme it can be worse overall, even for those individuals. See: game theory, social connections, morality, and so on.
5. When I write "Let's find ways to support good people who step up" I do mean concrete things such as "let's crowdfund ethical people's legal fees" to survive the Trump administration.