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Status Updates posted by efaardvark
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It's that time of year when my car starts looking a bit like a Rose Parade reject. (Those white specks are flower petals from a nearby tree.)
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The question was posed by one of the younger crew at work today, "Why do they call it 'spam' anyway?".
To which I of course replied, "well, you know that Monty Python sketch? That's where it comes from."
To which he replied, "what's Monty Python?".
Oi.. don't they teach kids anything in school these days?!
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Still employed. Know of a couple people who aren't. Still working through it all but one thing I'm sure of at this point is the US Congress is made up of self-centered, irresponsible idiots.
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Seems the other shoe has dropped at work. Employees have been instructed that the Lab will be physically closed and everyone should plan to attend a virtual meeting with management where they'll discuss the (lack of a) federal budget and what that means for NASA centers like JPL. Afterwards around 600 employees will be let go. (That's ~10% of the Lab's total workforce.) This all according to an email from Lab management earlier today.
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I hope you're not affected by this sad news. It always amazes me the lengths employers will go to to avoid using the "R" word, they use terms like "let go" which makes one wonder if they've been holding on to people. Then there's the wonderful phrase one of my former employers used "we're offering you the opportunity to take early retirement".
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@Animedragon Thanks. We got an informal pep-talk from our "group soop" (group supervisor) after the official email from upper management came out. The soop said he said that he doesn't think that the DSN (deep space network) that I'm affiliated with will be hit too hard. We've taken cuts in previous years and we're already at our limits. Any more and we'd be cutting bone. We also have a lot of customers and commitments, including with high-profile ones like JAXA and ESA.
The counter argument to that is that a Mars sample return has been at or near the top of the planetary scientists' wish list in NASA's decadal survey for literally decades yet that has been one of the programs hit the hardest. This is all driven by DC politics too, so logic need not necessarily apply.
Well, I'll know later Wednesday afternoon. One way or another.
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I almost have to LOL whenever someone uses the term "based" these days. It's one of those overused words or phrases that swaps its slang meaning between generations. To my generation (graduated HS in the early 80s) the term "based" came from the term used for someone who was addicted to freebasing cocaine. These were typically wild, irrational people who would do anything for another hit and were typically about a half step from killing themselves with their addiction.
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I often have trouble understanding what teenagers are saying because they use words to mean different things to the meaning they had when I was their age. When I was a teenager saying someone was "sick" or "wicked" was a derogative insult or a negative comment about their attitude, now I'm led to believe it's a compliment.
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Had to go out to Studio City a while back & on the way back I saw the Warner Bros. tower. Which of course made me think of the Animaniacs. I had to look it up but that was early 90s! 30 years ago! Now I feel old.
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Got some (probably) bad news today at work. According to Laurie Leshin, JPL's director, next year's budget for NASA - and therefor the lab's - will be around 10% less than expected. One of NASA's flagship missions, the Mars Sample Return has had its budget for next year slashed to around $300M from $800M to $900M. Ouch. Other missions are in a similar predicament. "It is also becoming more likely that there will be JPL workforce impacts in the form of layoffs, and the way such JPL workforce actions are implemented means that the impact would not be limited to MSR", according to an email Leshin sent to the Lab's employees this afternoon.
I say "probably" because all this is due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed a few months ago by the US Congress and the management is still recalculating and rearranging the budgets for FY 2024 and 2025 based on the mandates contained therein. We don't know the details yet, but the broad outline is pretty clear. Some layoffs have already happened. Others are likely as the details are worked out.
Happy New Year!
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I found out today that the day after that email came out the lab did actually let about 100 contractors go. Very abruptly from the sound of things.
Meanwhile the "leaders" in Congress are complaining that NASA should have waited for... something. Waiting for Congress to deliver a final budget is a non-starter because they'll no doubt argue until the last minute. (Or later! And if they can't agree then across-the-board cuts automatically kick in that would be even deeper than what's been proposed.) When you're told next year's budget will be between 30 and 90% of what you had planned for then you need to get started NOW. The FRA passed in July. Since then all Congress has done is go on break for the holidays. What's NASA management supposed to do?
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Of course the first video played from space was a cat video.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser -
Best compilation I've seen so far. Gotta say, after the pretty wild first test this one went much, much better. Not perfect of course, but that's fine at this point. Gives me hope they might someday actually get 'Ship working as intended. That would make the next couple decades so amazing! It was only 13 years between the Wright Flyer @ Kitty Hawk and the first commercial cargo (mail) delivery after all, and only ~30 until the Boeing 247, the first commercial airliner.
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Got a short weekend this week, courtesy of OSIRIS-REx delivering pieces of Bennu to Earth. 24 hours on-call the day before then 10 or so hours on-site Saturday leading up to the reentry of the capsule containing the sample.
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100F temps lately means replacing the A/C air filter in the car gets top priority on today's todo list. Having to choose between breathing oven-temperature air or air that smells like moldy socks is not a choice one should have to make.
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@Bulleje76 Sunny Southern California. Only it wasn't so sunny today.
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Up way past my bedtime on-call for the (successful!) Chandrayaan-3 launch.
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Cool APOD (astronomy picture of the day)
Who needs fantasy when we have stuff like this in real life?
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We're setting up for the annual open house at work. This weekend! Saw a Mars Sample Return vehicle mockup already unpacked as I was leaving & by the end of the week I'm sure they'll have models of all the rovers and a number of spacecraft set up as well. All part of the (somewhat) controlled chaos that is public outreach.
Hope it isn't super hot this weekend. A few years back before the covid shutdown we had a weekend with over 40,000 visitors! Parking was a nightmare and the temperatures got up over 100F, provoking real health concerns since the JPL campus simply isn't set up to accommodate so many people. (Normal employee count is more like 6000. Even less now that a lot of them are still doing the work-from-home thing post-covid.) We had to start requiring tickets to limit the visitor count for safety reasons. Tickets are free but limited in number and tied to specific times to keep the visitor count at any one time from getting out of hand.
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As usual Scott Manley has put together a timely compilation of the available data on the event. Though I'm sure the full analysis of the telemetry will require a bit more time before we know the root cause of the booster/starship failure, I think it's clear from video from the launch coverage that the pad is going to need major redesign and repairs before the next launch attempt, and it is quite likely that the debris from the pad at least partially contributed to the failure of the booster as well.
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Pretty… chunky launch. Flamey end of vehicle not stay pointed at ground. Starship not go to space today.
Seriously, at least one chunk of the pad looked to be about truck-sized, and rose to the level of the bottom of the starship before falling back down. I’m betting that several of those dark engines were due to debris impact. I’m surprised there wasn’t catastrophic damage done to the booster at launch as a result of the rapid unscheduled excavation. Stage zero clearly needs a bit more design work.