Note to Taxpayers: Go to Pluto; Then Buy Expensive Car
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Keith’s note: This is what Alan Stern, the Principal investigator for the NASA New Horizons mission does with the Twitter account @NewHorizons2015 that served as the the official – and then the quasi-official mission’s Twitter presence. He wants you to know that he just bought an expensive Tesla. Clearly the job pays well. Check out the most recent IRS 990 form for SwRI. Scroll past Part XII for “additional data” and you’ll see that senior SwRI staff (including Stern) are exceptionally well paid – vastly in excess of what anyone at NASA is paid. Of course, with regard to work on New Horizons, the funding comes from NASA.
Hmm what should be an oxymoron – A scientist who is paid well?
I have a real problem with this sentiment. A successful scientist should be paid more than the CEO of the company/institution he/she works for because that skill is the future of the company/institution.
I agree that use of the @NewHorizons2015 account was not in the best taste, but personally he can spend his money how he sees fit.
However you have now opened the door to him criticizing every purchase you make as a private citizen.
Don’t buy a Tesla!
Teslas are a sweet ride.
For sure. My wife ordered one. She makes enough money to buy it. Here’s how it goes:
Tesla doesn’t have dealers, of course, so you call them to make an appointment. The car appears in front of the house, just materializes out of thin air; not sure how Elon manages to do that.
Actually, the car arrives driven by a very nicely appointed young lady, which makes sense. The vehicle is spotlessly clean, of course. The young lady is available for as long as needed; in our case about three hours.
And she is incredibly completely knowledgable about the vehicle: tech specs, financing, options, servicing, whatever questions you ask she has answers. A very impressive person.
The car is available as a lease or a purchase. They have a fairly unique buy-back program similar to the way jewelers handle diamonds.
The best part- driving the car. It has a huge touch screen perhaps 17″ tall and 12″ wide with more information about the car than you’d need, except for one: the distance to the nearest charging station.
You sit in the car, adjust the seats, head down the driveway to the street. There, I stopped the car and warned the passengers. I pushed the pedal to the floor from standing stop.
And just about broke my neck! From 0-60 in something like 3 seconds must be experienced; descriptions fall flat. The car is stunningly quick, handles like a BMW or high-end Mercedes or even like a Corvette. It is really responsive.
It is simply a fabulous car: fit and finish are seamless, everywhere. No flaws. And it is big- lots of room inside, with a backseat that reminds me of a Checker cab.
So, Suzie wants it. She’s been driving a Prius for more than 10 years- another very dependable vehicle, by the way. Is Tesla pricey? Yea. It’s more than I’d want to spend; I like my Tahoe. But Suzie has no expensive hobbies. The Tesla has a surprisingly low total cost of ownership, driven by very high resale and by the minuscule costs of electricity.
She’s managed our money very well. We are now both near retirement. And I say go for it.
If you look at the 990, Stern’s compensation is comparable to quite a few others in the organization. Also the CEO (president, in this case) makes about three times ($1.3M) what Stern is pulling down (about $442K in total).
Those are quite impressive salaries for a non-profit.
Perhaps that is why they have no profits.
I’ve worked with quite a few non-profits over the years. It’s not unusual for top brass to be pretty well compensated. Non-profits need competent leadership, too.
As I understand it, SwRI is technically a “not for profit” rather than “nonprofit.” I think the distinction is that they can make a profit, but the money is reinvested internally rather than paid to owners.and stock holders. That also implies some differences in taxes due and what/how they charge to government contracts. You’d need to ask a lawyer for more details.
I was unaware of hte “not for profit” versus “nonprofit” distinction. Still, it looks to me like much of that profit is going straight into the pockets of the employees rather than being reinvested internally (e.g. to buy equipment, hire more people, and etc.).
Personally, I won’t want to make that much. I’m on soft money, and a large number of research scientists are in the same position. The deal is that my institution will pay me as long as I can bring in enough contract/grant money to cover my salary.
Given typical funding levels for NASA research and analysis grants, and typical selection rates for those programs, the average soft-money scientist needs to put in about four proposals a year to cover a $75-$100 k salary. If you put enough effort into those proposals, that adds up to 10% of your time, just writing proposals. (Well, it’s not that bad: If you put enough effort in, your odds of having a proposals selected are better than average.) It can get to the point where a raise actually hurts, because you then need to spend more time writing proposals.
The U.S. and Russia are scarily not all that far apart. Both countries are becoming oligarchies, IMO. While incomes in the private sector have “corrected” for the most part (except for really high paid CEOs), there are a great number of government employees in the U.S. who are living it up, and willing to let you know about it.
Stern is not a government employee, btw.
Not sure where you are going with this, Keith. Are you saying that Dr. Stern is overpaid, that he’s bragging, that he’s bragging on an account once used officially, that people paid indirectly from NASA should drive Yugo, or what?
He’s a seasoned professional enjoying the fruits of his career. Glad to see him appreciating it.
As to the income disparity, people in America have mobility and they generally earn more when they are worth more (not always true, alas).
My guess is that he’s saying it’s pretty crass to brag about getting a Tesla on taxpayer funds.
Once he gets his check, it’s his money to do what he wants with it.
Of course it is. No one said it wasn’t. But there’s also decorum, something that seems to repeatedly go to the wayside on social media.
Talking about taxpayer funds always bothered me. sure that’s where the money sources, but is he earning his keep or not?
He’s absolutely earning his keep. No doubt about it. New Horizons wouldn’t have happened without him.
Here’s the thing: There a lot of PIs (and NASA personnel) on a lot of missions that no one knows about. And there are a few that have been fortunate to have breakout moments to become a public figure which is great for them. Once you do that, then you are held to a higher standard as an ambassador for those that haven’t and for science. Is that right? Actually, I do think it’s right and people like Carl Sagan have a long lasting impact because they could bridge that gap. Dr. Stern is a fantastic communicator and, from what I can tell, a great guy. I contend that the Tweet was, as I said, crass and simply not a good idea and, not that I seriously consider he’d even care what I have to say, it would be helpful that he avoided it in the future.
His salary comes from funds from NASA. His pay exceeds that of anyone who has – or does – work for NASA.
Not ALL of SwRI’s income comes from NASA.
Why not criticize the income of the president of Lockheed since “some” of their income comes from NASA?
Oh I have and will continue to do so.
But, he gets things done.
1. We have no idea from this filing what fraction of Dr. Stern’s time as PI of New Horizons is paid by NASA. It could be as little as 1 – 5%.
2. New Horizons was, I believe, selected competitively from among other proposals in what became the New Frontiers program. Thus the life cycle cost had to have been within program limits, so what any individual on the project makes is pretty much irrelevant in the long run.
3. There’s at least one space scientist at GSFC who makes way less than Dr. Stern but who also drives a Tesla (well, his wife’s Tesla). Buying a Tesla proves nothing other than being willing to put your money where your mouth is on climate change, and earning enough to qualify for a loan.
Could anyone comment on why civil service salaries are relative low compared to industry? I know, in the 1970s (when my father retired as an NSF divisional director) it had to do with congressional pay. They had to get paid more than the highest paid agency director, who had to get paid more than the rates for the next-less-senior level of civil servants, etc. It ended up with a situation where civil servants couldn’t get a raise until Congress voted themselves a raise, and that was politically problematic. Is this still the case?
Really? How much does he make?
It would be fabulous if most cars turned off the engine at stops or low speeds saving fuel. At least buying a Tesla will help produce the lower cost environmentally sound alternative for the rest of the world as Musk works long term solutions.
When you privatize R&D following the outsource manta, the result for a company is ~ twenty receiving compensation of 200K to 400K and three 600K to 1M, substantially higher than the USG rates. I thought top researchers needed less oversight, so is this why the USG pays less? Seems to be following the same path as health care…no one wants to do the actual work.
It appears to be way less than other industry salaries, who have stock for pay incentives that reward short term over the long term, and not the environment vs make a buck. Let the free market decide.
The turn off / auto-start feature was pretty common on cars that I have been renting in Europe lately. I’m not sure how expensive that option is, but it can’t be too much. Tesla really doesn’t built enough cars to make much impact overall.
Welcome to the US where working for a tax exempt organization can be far more lucrative than one would think.
Yea, but look at that long list of “vice presidents” for what looks like a tax exempt organization that spent a total of a bit over $500 million in one year. That high number of lofty sounding titles reeks of an organization that wants to insure its “outward facing titles” are quite impressive when they send their people out to meet with the organizations that provide their funding.
SwRI does a lot of very different things; analyzing engine oil, running endurance tests on engines, doing space hardware, doing space science, etc. So they have a lot of different business units, each one of which would have some managers. Whether they call them VPs or Directors or Manager or Grand Potentates really makes no difference. The first 2 slides in a presentation usually give the org chart so you know where the people you are talking to fit within the organization, and all those people tend to be at the second tier down from the top level and responsible for some functional business unit (or, as in this case, a mission PI).
It’s not like in the banking industry where your local branch manager is a VP, because there’s a legal requirement for certain officer titles to perform certain functions at a bank. That “must be a VP” leads to a plethora of VP titles of various flavors (assistant, associate, senior) in the finance industry.
In government service, there’s a similar taxonomy with chiefs and directors and branches and directorates, etc.
I don’t get the response here. Seems to me it’s a nuanced nod to Elon and SpaceX. It’s a technology and geeky thing not a status thing. But I guess haters are always gonna hate.
Doing science can make you rich, as along as you are the PI.
Doing anything well can make you rich.
I just hope between Federal and State taxes we get at least half of those ungodly salaries back.
Right, because the well compensated in this country have no way of protecting their earnings from taxes. *Snort.*
Stern works at the SwRI office in Boulder, Colorado. But SwRI is based in San Antonio, Texas. Texas does not have an income tax.
I think it matters where you work and reside when it comes to your taxes.
You wrote “salaries”, plural. Of the people listed in that IRS form, I believe most (possibly all except Stern) live and work in Texas.
why do you neo-con types scream about privacy and allowing ppl to spend their money the way that they want, and then when a guy spends it WISELY, you get upset ?
I thought NASA made competitive award decisions – if so, who cares how APL pays its personnel – the question is whether their mission was a good value for the government; why not point out the much bigger discrepancies between NASA salaries and the mainstream aerospace companies? Bernie Sanders hasn’t won yet and in the end, if not for Stern’s doggedness, there would have been no New Horizons; he’s earned his Tesla!
It seems quite alright to me that one of the world’s foremost planetary explorers of our time is payed enough to buy a nice car. It would’ve been strange otherwise, as in the Soviet Union where rocket scientists had little reward compared to their parasitic politruks. This blog post has a really bad angle on this pretend-to-be “news story” about Alan’s private life.
It seems NASA Watch would prefer that NASA sponsorees refrain from teasing NASA Watch by gloating about their possessions (a Tesla is a “sweet ride”). Or would NASA Watch prefer that successful folks restrict themselves to the traditional status symbol cars, e.g. Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Audi, Jaguar, Maserati, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, etc.? Perhaps NASA Watch and some commentators might consider whether they prefer these well-earned funds to be returned to the government, or go to support and sponsor innovative new technologies developed by and employing workers in the USA, that address both energy conservation and pollution/carbon emissions (and indirectly the cost of access to space).
Keith, normally, you are a sane guy.
If you do the calculations on owning a Tesla MS, you will find that owning it is quite cheap esp. compared to a 350Z, which sucks the gas.
It is cheaper, faster, and safer than anything even close to comparable.
As such, with the very low costs of maintenence along with electricity, this is a lot like owning a lexus, which is NOT outrageous. the only difference is that the Tesla is a great deal safer and faster.