Where NASA Employees Can Go For Furlough Updates

1. People may love working for NASA, but they need to have a steady paycheck. Those who leave will not be back because they need to count on food and housing. Inexperienced new employees cannot fully replace the loss of experienced employees. This is not rocket science.

   1. And how often do they have an unsteady paycheck? And how often has their been a shutdown that they haven’t received backpay, for what amounts to be (in the end at least) a free paid vacation? I’m not unsympathetic to not having a paycheck for a bit, but to say that people are going to quit over this is ridiculous. If anything, you should worry about SpaceX, given that they have a fairly high turnover rate, certainly compared to NASA, or I’d wager, even the contractors for NASA.

      1. 1) You’re discounting the stress factor for many (not all, by any means, but many) people who actually live from paycheck to paycheck. Bills need to be paid on time; IOU’s or notes saying “I’ll pay you when I get my back pay” typically don’t suffice. Why deal with it if you can work elsewhere without it?

         2) There’s a large contractor contingent that does not get back pay when Congress authorizes such pay for civil servants. Why does everybody forget about this group? (Or almost everybody. I think legislators like Senator Chris Van Hollen and some others are trying to make sure that contractors get back pay this time, but I woudn’t bet on their success.)

      2. I expect people to quit are new hires besides scientists there are IT people, mechanical engineers, etc. that started to work for onsite contractors like Jacobs… they can’t go to work because civil servants are not allowed. They may seek other employment or accept the other offer declined when accepted a job at a NASA center. Some of these positions are not easy to find a good fit.

      3. I very much doubt that SpaceX have a high turnover right in comparison to NASA or any other company. But a stress factor exists when worrying about life plans ect and if you will get paid. It may be enough for some to consider jobs with other employers that they may not have otherwise. I worked for an employer many years ago who we did not know 100% if they would pay us at the end of the month and that can be very stressful

      4. Well, what do you expect them to do, when the rent comes due on February 1st? I guess the kids can take a semester off from college, since tuition is often due at the start of the semester (now). Most people don’t have enough money in the bank to pay the bills for an indefinite number of months without a paycheck. Like it or not, at some point they’ll have to quit and get a new job.

2. We will see the brain drain in March

3. Where can NASA employees go? To the poorhouse thanks to Trump & McConnell.

   1. It takes two to tangle. $5 billion is pocket change in Washington and building the wall will at the minimum create thousands of jobs in some of the poorest parts of the nation. So there is enough blame being stubborn for both sides to share.

      1. This is not the way government is supposed to work. You don’t hold the budget (and government employees) hostage to get something you want. You are supposed to debate and negotiate with your opponents during the budget process, come to some compromise that everybody can live with, and then pass the budget.

         (Actually, this did in fact happen. The appropriation bills were already approved and ready to go. Both houses passed the bills and were out the door based on the fact that Trump said he would sign them. Then, he decided to throw a tantrum, changed his mind, and here we are.)

         In general, people realize that one side is not supposed to hold hostages when negotiating with the other side. So while (as conventional wisdom states) nobody looks good during a government shutdown, the side that takes hostages (in this case Trump) comes out looking much worse and always loses. And they should. Again, this is not the way government is supposed to work.

         (Not to mention that spending $5 billion, whether it’s pocket change or not, on a wall is a stupid idea. Let’s add that $5 billion to an infrastructure bill which would employ thousands of people to do something that’s actually useful.)

         1. The data just doesn’t support the wall. Illegal immigration is down. Most illegal drugs come into the country at legal ports of entry (only a small fraction of what comes in legally is searched for drugs). And terrorists just aren’t coming into the country via illegal border crossings (according to the agencies inside US government that are responsible for tracking such things).

            And for the record, I’m supportive of actual border security including using the latest technologies to detect intrusions. I am also in support of adding new border patrol infrastructure (buildings, vehicles, and etc.) so agents can be closer to where people cross illegally so they can actually be caught because right now, it takes agents far too long to respond.

         2. No its not the way government is suppose to work, but the reality is if President Trump claims the Sun rises in the East the Democrats will insist it does not. That is the root of the problem all hand waving and news spin aside. And sadly neither side cares about the pawns being used in the battle.

            1. Not all that long ago (was it last year or the year before, I forget), the Democrats left a meeting with Trump under the assumption that they came to an agreement with him on a somewhat comprehensive program for immigration (the allocation of a substantial sum for a border wall in exchange for a path forward for DACA children to obtain citizenship). Less than a day later, Trump completely changed his position, blowing up the whole agreement.

               Fast forward, and a couple of days ago Trump sends Pence to Congress to negotiate a resolution to the current situation, only to completely contradict and shoot down the parameters for an agreement Pence was putting forward.

               So the real root of the problem is that the Democrats (hell, the Senate Republicans) need to have a reasonable, dare I say sane, person on the other side whose word can be trusted, or taken seriously, or be believed, or whatever way you want to say it. And they don’t.

            2. Talk to the Republicans and you hear a different story. And that is the problem, everyone is busy pointing fingers to assign blame to score points with their followers and no one is looking to find a solution.

               Good government is about the making compromises, not about winning or losing. And it is also about sometimes sacrificing your political party’s position for the greater good.

               Yes, it’s going to be a long long two years, and the impeachment hearings haven’t even started yet…

               That is why I expect almost nothing will get done in regards to space policy until after the next election. And this will probably be only the first of many shutdowns.

            3. I’m sorry, coming to agreement with your opposition on immigration reform, only to blow apart the agreement less than a day later is, quite simply, wrong. How you can turn that into “both sides are to blame” is beyond me.

               I’m sorry, to agree to sign a bill to keep the government operating, only to walk away from it is, quite simply, wrong. How you can turn that into “both sides are to blame” is beyond me.

               Finally, I’m sorry, to hold the government hostage because you aren’t getting what you want is, quite simply, wrong. And how you can turn THAT into “both sides are to blame” is beyond me.

            4. Let’s get away from “wrong”, since that’s a value judgement, and something people may never agree about. (And staying away from that is actually how you do work out compromises…)

               Making agreements and then walking away from them may or may not be wrong. But it definitely makes it harder to reach future agreements and compromises. Not dealing honestly, all ethical considerations aside, is throwing sand into the gears of a functional government. From a strictly practical standpoint, that’s not a good idea.

               Holding the government “hostage” to get your way? Well, some would say that’s what Democrats in Congress are doing. Without debating who is doing that, I think it would be fair to say the Presidents actions would set a precedent. Deciding on funding is traditionally and constitutionally a power given to Congress. The President’s power to veto (or refuse to sign) spending bills is a check on that power, but the President has never had the authority to dictate budgets to Congress. If a President can use government shutdowns as a credible threat to enforce his budget choices, that would be a new precedent and a fundamental change in the way our government works. That could be a more important issue that the currently debated wall.

            5. And that is the bigger Constitutional issue that the government workers have been turned into pawns over.

            6. From reports about the 9 January meeting at the White House, Schumer asked Trump why he wouldn’t open the government and stop hurting people. To which he replied, “Because then you won’t give me what I want.”

               So it’s pretty clear who is turning them into pawns.

            7. While other reports say that President Trump reduced his request to $2.5 billion for a simpler steel wall and was meant by silence by the Democrats who refused to neogiate, so it depends on who is telling the story. Again, it takes two to tangle.

            8. Hmmm, can’t find any reports about yesterday’s meeting and $2.5 billion anywhere. I’d be interested to see one.

               In the meantime, I did find this one, from about a week earlier:

               https://tinyurl.com/y82pppcw

               This item reported the following

               ************************

               Sources familiar with President Donald Trump’s thinking tell ABC News he has drawn a red line of at least $2.5 billion in wall funding, a figure that Vice President Mike Pence and acting chief of staff had last presented to lawmakers as a potential compromise.

               But asked during his Cabinet meeting whether he would accept less than $2.5 billion, Trump seemed to rule out the figure altogether.

               “No, not $2.5, no,” Trump said. “We’re asking for $5.6. And you know, somebody said 2.5. No. This is national security we’re talking about.”

               ***************************

               So Trump didn’t reduce his request, Pence did. Then Trump pulled the rug out from under him. (Or, more likely, Trump told Pence he would reduce his request, and THEN he pulled the rug out from under him).

               So there goes Pence’s value as a negotiator. And there goes Trump’s credibility. (Sorry, that last statement is incorrect: he didn’t have any credibility before this.)

               I don’t know, you tell me how one goes about dealing with a guy who’ll literally double cross his own negotiators in the blink of an eye.

            9. You illustrate well why this shutdown will go on for a while. Each side has its own narrative and is playing to its own audience rather then looking for common ground. The harsh reality is neither side is really ready to settle the issue and neither cares about the damage done as they play out their power game. I really feel sorry for the NASA, indeed all the government employees, that are caught up in this power struggle.

            10. That’s the nonsense of false equivalence.

         3. This is a really important point that I’m disappointed has not been raised more frequently in the discussion of the current shutdown. Using the threat of a shutdown as leverage to win this or that policy point is a bug, not a feature, of the budget system. The fact that actual shutdowns have been rare until more recently was thanks to a general consensus that battles over policy disagreements should end in compromise and mutual agreement to carry the fight forward to another day. The current willingness to inflict real damage through a shutdown is a sad commentary on how badly the process is being misused.

            On a related point raised later in this thread, there are at least three reasons to reject the “both sides are to blame” argument in this case. First, the President in this case is the one making the policy ultimatium to build a wall. To say that the democrats are obliged to negotiate with him on that point implies that they would be so obligated no matter what the ultimatum: if the President had said “henceforth all migrant children are to be killed and eaten,” would the democrats have been obliged to concede some ground in that direction?

            The second reason that both sides are not to blame in this case is that building a wall across the southern border is, on the face of it, a silly and impractical notion. Like Jeff below, I’m no opponent of imporous borders, and I’d be fine with more resources going to border security, although in the scheme of things I don’t think it’s the highest priority (at least not in comparison with funding for space projects 😉 ). As the party making a demand so impractical that not even a republican controlled house and senate would go along with it, the President bears responsibility for this impasse.

            The third reason that the President bears more responsibility for this mess than the democrats in congress is his choice of the terrain of this battle. He has chosen a topic of such symbolic importance to both his supporters and his detractors that compromise is virtually impossible. Neither side has a way to leave this battlefield, so they must fight to the death. Poetic, perhaps, but no way to win a war.

      2. We don’t need a wall. Period.

         1. We don’t “need” the SLS but we are spending billions on it. The government spends lots of money on things not really needed in the opinion of one group or another.

      3. I question that idea about jobs in the poorest parts of the nation. I note that there are nine congressional districts along the Mexican border, and the congressmen representing every single one of them are against building this wall. (Eight Democrats and one Republican, if you care.) I assume they have considered the economic benefits to their constituents and didn’t find that argument convincing.

         But shifting to something more NASA-related, I’ve seen lots of questions about how NASA estimates costs for various projects. And questions about how reliable those estimates are, if at all. Now I get to ask the same question about a non-NASA project.

         Where did that $5.7 billion number for this wall come from? That level of precision implies a cost estimate good to better than 2%. Or at least someone thinks it’s that good. I’m used to NASA and space-related cost estimates, and I know they are infamous. I hope cost estimates for construction are more reliable (although I’ve heard plenty of complaints about them.) But it sounds like they still haven’t settled on whether this wall would be concrete or metal. In NASA terms, that isn’t even a pre-Phase A concept. Costs for NASA projects are usually assumed to be very, very rough estimates until PDR, KDP C and starting into Phase C. I don’t see how $5.7 billion for this wall is a credible number.

         1. I suspect that the number is based on experience with the 600+ miles of the wall that have already been built under previous Administrations starting with the Clinton Administration. It’s not like its something radically new, but basically trying to close all the gaps between the existing sections and improving the design based on experience. Its more like estimating the cost of a new McDonalds than a new spacecraft.

            http://www.worldstir.com/hi…

            1993 – President Bill Clinton mandates construction on a 13-mile “Border Wall” along a line in the sand between San Diego and Tijuana. It is projected to cost $39 million and reduce border apprehensions from 100,000 per day to 5,000 per day for those 13 miles. Emigrants find other paths.

            1. If so, that’s not even a good cost estimate by NASA standards. It assumes the construction material (a currently debated or discussed issue) and the topography are similar to existing walls along the border. That’s not going to give you a cost estimate good to under 2%.

               Actually, I take some of that back. You’re describing what NASA would call a parametric cost model. They take past projects, described by cost and various characteristics (power, data rate, number of instruments, delta-v, etc.) and turn it into a equation like: Cost = A*power + B*data rate + C*number of instruments + D*delta-v + … And, as with you suggestion about the $5.7 billion bill for this wall, they often use poor choices of parameters and too few past projects to give good results. So maybe that is a good cost estimate by NASA standards. But that’s damning with faint praise and I still don’t see $5.7 billion (and not $5.6 or $5.8 billion) as a defensible.

   2. Partisan BS. With average salaries of $80K-$130K, nobody at NASA is going to the poorhouse. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck on those salaries, you might want to enroll in a personal finance class during your time off.

      1. You win the idiotic post of the day award. You’ve never heard of children going to college, high housing prices, and paying to care for elderly parents, have you? Housing in many of the places where NASA employees live (DC, LA, Bay area) is well above the national average. I am leaving this post of yours up to show just how idiotic and ill-informed it is.

         1. It might help to attach some numbers to that. There is a new apartment complex being built next door to me, in Boulder, Colorado. (Near 55th and Arapahoe, which isn’t the most or least expensive part of the city.) The rent for a studio apartment (i.e. no bedrooms) will be $1750 per month. If you have a family, good luck buying a house for under half a million. The median cost in Boulder is getting close to a million. Which means it’s cheaper to buy a spacecraft built in Boulder than a house. (To be fair, that would be $300,000 for a good CubeSat bus.)

            And Boulder is cheap by some standards. I’ve seen numbers for places like the Bay Area (NASA Ames), Washington D.C. (NASA HQ and Goddard) and northern Los Angeles (JPL) which make housing costs almost a factor of two higher than Boulder. Of course, you could get by for less by accepting a very long commute, living in a pretty bad neighborhood or in a school district which you really wouldn’t want you children to attend. But, realistically, in many of the places NASA has facilities, $100k isn’t all that much to support a family on.

            1. Yes, many cities are just unaffordable for the average person to live in because of the cost of housing. My daughter is a CPA with one of the big accounting firms making good money in Southern California, but needs a roommate to split the rent on a small apartment.

               I left California years ago because of the high costs and taxes. Today in Texas my costs ($950) for a nice 2 bedroom house are less than I used to pay in taxes to California. You have to wonder what the future of urban areas will be with their high costs of housing. Yes, a 100k will barely lift a family out of poverty in a city like Washington DC nowadays.

            2. It’s worth noting that Southwest Research Institute’s main campus in San Antonio, Texas, has used this to its advantage. When you are trying to recruit people currently working at places like JPL, cost of living and housing is a major plus. The difference is easily a factor of two; people can and have sold a modest house in LA, bought what amounts to a mansion in San Antonio, and still had a few hundred thousand left over.

               It’s entirely possible some NASA centers (Ames, JPL and Goddard) will become unviable at some point. Many private companies are moving their workforce out of the really expensive areas. I recently learned some companies in silicon valley are recruiting at University of Michigan, but asking people to stay in Ann Arbor and telecommute, due to the low cost of living. Saying Ann Arbor has a low cost of living should scare anyone familiar with Michigan. I know congressmen are very protective of government facilities in their district, but I’m not sure how far that can go.

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