NASA Briefed Employees This Morning (Audio)
Keith’s note: NASA held an internal all hands briefing this morning. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said that is giving a lot of authority to the new NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. Duffy is not sure how long he will be acting Administrator since there are no plans in place but that could change. Duffy said that American needs to get to the Moon before China and then go on to Mars. He used the phrase “manifest destiny to the stars” to describe the rationale. Duffy said that the President’s Budget Request for FY 2026 is the NASA budget and that it is enough for NASA to be able to accomplish its mission. But Duffy would try to get more money if needed. Duffy said that NASA is under a tight time schedule to get back to the Moon and that things need to change like increasing programmatic pace. Looking into safety, in echoing the Department of Transportation and FAA, Duffy said “sometimes we can let safety be the enemy of making progress .” [Audio]
12 responses to “NASA Briefed Employees This Morning (Audio)”
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Speaking only for myself, I thought Amit was legitimately amazing, very proud of him.
Amit: Every meeting, every thing you’re doing, ask yourself is this helping us get back to the moon. If its not call me and ill tell you not to do it
He also was very team focused, can’t be happy we lost 25% of the CS workforce, but said something like “we have an impossible task but we’re gonna do it”. I found it inspiring at the least.
It felt like he had room to speak truth to power, and Duffy seemed really interested, which to my knowledge is the first time he’s expressed that.
Overall the townhall went better than I thought it would..
The issue is NASA is more than space exploration.
Calling what the majority of what Goddard does “Congressionally mandated science,” isn’t what I’d personally consider inspiring in the least.
Thinking more about this, come november if we get the clawback we
1) Will probably be way way way behind
2) Will actually have a full budget, PLUS the big beautiful bill budget which we haven’t even begun to allocate work to, to my knowledge
3) WILL HAVE TO HIRE BACK THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE
I think the best move they could have done was to keep Duffy was saying too many words. I felt a similar vibe from Amit and, in the moment, would say that I shared your enthusiasm. He lost me when he solicited calls from everyone seeking input about counter productive effort that would work against getting back to the moon. I don’t think that will ever bear fruit and everything kind of fell apart for me right then.
Didn’t NASA spend 50% of budget on human exploration last many years? Now it is distroying the other half which has been quite successful.
It went better than I thought it would. I agree Amit seemed pretty genuine. Although he’s always been pretty straight forward IMO
Blink 3 times if you need help Amit
I was skeptical heading in, since we haven’t seen much in the way of leadership or intelligence (or anything legitimately administrative for that matter) coming from above. Not only was I pleasantly surprised, I was impressed with Secretary Duffy and Amit lived up to everything I’d expect from an experienced NASA leader. There were a few items that weren’t communicated as clearly as I’d like, but overall this was positive and a breath of fresh air. I guess my remaining concerns are what happens to missions like aeronautics, earth science, etc that have plenty of good work to do that isn’t related to the moon and Mars? And the other thing they need to work on is getting the research centers engaged in their goals instead of sending and relying on the space centers, which often happens when we start focusing on space missions.
For example, if they need aerodynamics expertise for launch, ascent, stage and booster separation, entry, descent, landing, etc, whether in Earth or Mars atmospheres, the leading experts are at the research centers, not the space centers, and cuts in the Aeronautics budget will free up a lot of that workforce. If our leaders truly want the best and brightest, they need to open up and tap into the wider expertise within NASA. Way back in the day, Mike Griffin recognized this and we saw aerodynamics work for Constellation/Ares being led by Langley and Ames with an aggressive campaign of wind tunnel testing and CFD.
I feel terrible for anyone working in aeronautics or anything not HSF related.
Most of the last six Presidents have promised human missions to the Moon or Mars. It hasn’t harmed any person in any way that none of those follies came true. Before their cancellation, each of the previous follies has cost the lost of face of having an organization stand there, look the public in the eye, and promise something which absolutely, certainly, did not come to pass.
If returning a microwave oven’s worth of samples from Mars is supposed to cost $11 billion, and those samples are already there, and don’t require food, water, and life support, returning two people will obviously cost far more than $11 billion.
I’ve been at NASA for nearly 20 years, and there’s been one plan or another to get humans back on the moon for that entire time, with very little to show for it.
Meanwhile, the rest of NASA has sampled an asteroid, landed rovers on Mars, launched a gigantic space telescope, sent a probe to Europa and one to the Sun, done fundamental aeronautics and earth science research, etc. etc. etc.
It’s completely insulting for leadership to tout what amounts to doubling down on decades of massive spending with no results, while strangling the parts of the institution that have delivered on their commitments.
KSC, MSFC, and JSC do not have the right people in place for success for these missions. Plain and simple. I don’t care what Duffy or Amit say about having the best and brightest or that people should speak up if something doesn’t make sense. Some people there are the best in the field, but a lot are gone. There are key areas where operations issues persist during process flowing where there is no longer anyone with expertise to give technical support to assess and clear risk. The agency level corrosion expert was forced out because they were a single point failure, asked for help from management because they were beyond exhausted, and were labeled difficult and eventually terminated by their insecure supervisor. Same for the NDE lead, heading that way for pressure systems. Best design engineers are already gone. No backs ups were hired and trained and the people they assigned to those areas (who do not have the expertise) are now floundering with making decisions. Their engineering management has no problem pretending that things are OK and lying to the administration that they have the right people in place. The division Chiefs and branch Chiefs in those areas also have no problem lying about it. This isn’t the case for everyone, but it is the case for key areas.
Other engineers in operations who hold key positions are being bullied or forced into silence for critical issues because program management wants to pretend that they don’t exist. Every single CLS problem is the perfect example of this, but the same issues exist on all crew vehicles.
The top leadership can claim that people can speak up if there’s an issue, and they may believe that wholeheartedly. The reality is that the yes people below them, including center directors and directorate Chiefs, are going to hide all these issues or squash the people who are speaking up using a normal chain of command. If anyone actually speaks up outside the chain of command they eventually will be terminated for some random reason. This is actually happening. I wish the program the best, but I just don’t see it with the current culture. Largely gone are the experts who helped push Artemis I forward so that it could launch. They had gumption and were not scared to cut through red tape to get technical issues solved are ops going. They will not be returning to their old jobs with the same crap management who doesn’t have their back either. KSC engineering spends more time making cool team T-shirts than they do solving resource problems. Poor MSFC is limping along in key areas, same for JSC. A few older guys who are probably national treasures are trying to help but they are tired too and cannot support operations from afar.