Elon Musk wants to be the one to decide the strategy for the U.S. space program. NASA doesn’t agree with this, but they depend too much on a billionaire close to Trump. This was confirmed by the story of the Starliner astronauts returning to Earth.
Two NASA offices are closing
The Trump administration’s decision to close two offices at NASA could, instead of saving money, dramatically increase spending on space exploration. In this case, Elon Musk will have unlimited influence on the agency. Many experts are now warning about the danger of this.
The NASA Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy and the Office of the Chief Scientist are being closed to provide independent analysis of key investments and strategies. This is happening amid widespread layoffs at the agency.
Workers in both offices say the cuts would undermine current goals for manned missions to the Moon and Mars. At the same time, they raise questions of conflict of interest for Musk, who remains CEO of SpaceX, the rocket and satellite giant, while heading the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, which led the campaign to cut the federal government under Donald Trump.
The US President has nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman, a SpaceX investor and close associate of Elon Musk, to be the next head of NASA. It is unclear how all this will end.
Strengthening Elon Musk’s position
On Tuesday, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station early Sunday morning, bringing home a pair of U.S. astronauts stuck there for more than nine months. And it doesn’t belong to anyone, but to Musk, which is evidence in favor of him being indispensable to NASA.
“Musk wants to go to Mars. He doesn’t need detractors,” said one senior NASA official. “The most independent and unbiased views on this come from these offices, not centers or directorates who don’t care as long as there is money flowing in.”
And it was the closure of these “opposition offices” that the space agency announced as recently as last week. The cuts will affect about 20 employees, with the last day of work scheduled for April 10. Ordinarily, fired federal workers are given 60 days’ notice, but NASA says it has shortened that deadline to 30 days because of the “urgent need” to comply with the executive order signed by Trump.
Acting NASA administrator Janet Petro was appointed by Trump in January. Shortly afterward, Petro appointed Michael Altenhofen, a longtime SpaceX employee, as a senior adviser, adding to concerns about conflicts of interest between the agency and Musk as SpaceX receives lucrative federal contracts.
When Petro had dinner with Musk last year, she said the encounter was “one of the most fascinating conversations of my life.”
Short-sighted decision
According to a senior official, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, the situation with the two closed offices is “extremely critical.” They said officials working for Trump and Musk were “causing NASA long-term damage.” “We’re all pissed off because we really care about this agency, and have spent years working in various parts of the agencies, at centers and other directorates, to bring that knowledge to [leaders in] the A-suite.”
Another fired employee of NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy said the office closures were a short-sighted decision. “We’re missing out on the longer-term vision for moon to Mars exploration by cutting these offices, and probably increasing the costs of these missions dramatically, without this analysis and more strategic tech development,” he said.
The cuts announced last week took the agency’s rank-and-file employees by surprise, the employee said. “These offices brought a lot of value in terms of efficiency,” they say. “They had very low input costs because they weren’t building anything. It was just the cost of a handful of employees who had a significant impact on savings, thinking about how to optimize technology investments and considering the overall strategic picture of where science should focus.”
Reorganization of NASA
SpaceX is NASA’s largest private contractor. The agency says the total amount of contracts with the company over the years is $15 billion. And this amount continues to grow, it keeps on coming. In February, NASA awarded the company a contract worth up to $300 million to launch the Pandora mission, as well as a $100 million contract to launch a near-Earth object observation mission.
Critics are already accusing NASA of giving too much preferential treatment to Elon Musk’s company. NASA, on the other hand, confirmed that an employee associated with DOGE was already present at the agency.
“Given Doge’s destructive seizure of power throughout the federal government and the unique conflicts-of-interest that Elon Musk possesses with Nasa, Doge’s presence at the agency creates an unprecedented threat from within Nasa’s own house,” three members of Congress wrote to the agency in February.
A NASA spokesman said: “To optimize our workforce, and in compliance with an executive order, Nasa is beginning its phased approach to a reduction in force, known as a RIF. A small number of individuals received notification March 10 they are a part of Nasa’s RIF.”
According to www.theguardian.com
