To achieve major goals, NASA seeks to streamline its organization

"It is imperative to concentrate resources towards the highest priority objectives."

See full article...

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

Let's hope this doesn't turn into "move fast and break things."

 

[Wickwick]

By leaving the Science Directorate separate from technology, NASA will still suffer from parochial turf protections to keep untried technologies off science missions. That enhances the probability of useful science for any given mission, but reduces the total amount of science over the long term for NASA.

But, of course, the investigators won't benefit from long-term improvements. As long as the Science Associate Administrator is a separate person from the Technology AA, there will be a continual battle between the two as exists now.

 

[MilanKraft]

Let's hope this doesn't turn into "move fast and break things."

There will unavoidably be some of that given the unfortunate influence of silicon valley on every kind of organizational culture, but hopefully that aspect does not touch core testing and launch safety protocols that we've built up from many hard lessons.

On balance, relative to all the ignorant, nation-undermining shit we see from people like Carr, Kennedy, and others, this news seems mostly reasonable / positive to me. Especially given how sprawling an organization NASA can be, and how slow that can make things at times. Am still somewhat skeptical of Isaacman on the level of him being from the big money crowd, but so far he seems to be doing a decent job. Fingers crossed he remains one of the few silver linings in this national shit show.

 

[Cowbells & Coffee]

All the above look like smart, savvy moves.
Godspeed Isaacman.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Let's hope this doesn't turn into "move fast and break things."

Who knows what will be possible once they shed all those excess Checkers and run lean with more Doers?

 

[spopepro]

Isaacman said the Department of Energy has had success with opening up competition to run its federally funded research and development centers, and he believes NASA can do the same.

If success means awarding the contract politically to the University of Texas, to then have them underprepared and underequipped to do the job, to then have the University of California just come back, but this time as a “joint venture” to let private contractors get a piece of the pie… sure. Success.

 

[Fatesrider]

There will unavoidably be some of that given the unfortunate influence of silicon valley on every kind of organizational culture, but hopefully that aspect does not touch core testing and launch safety protocols that we've built up from many hard past lessons.

On balance, relative to all the ignorant, toxic, country-undermining shit we see from people like Carr, Kennedy, and others, this news seems mostly reasonable / positive to me. Especially given how sprawling an organization NASA can be, and how slow that can make things at times. Am still somewhat skeptical of Isaacman on the level of him being from the big money crowd, but so far he seems to be doing a decent job. Fingers crossed he remains one of the few silver linings in this national shit show.

I agree, but it does make me wonder if this:

“I believe it is imperative to concentrate resources towards the highest priority objectives in the National Space Policy and liberate the best and brightest from needless bureaucracy and obstacles that impede progress,” Isaacman wrote in his 3,000-word letter.

Wasn't just putting a positive spin on yet another massive budget cut for the American space program in general.

They still haven't passed a budget...

 

[kaced]

Things like this are very hard to evaluate from the outside, I would guess even for a journalist who is familiar with more of the details. The internal lines of communication and responsibility in any organization are complex. I can’t even always keep it straight at my job who has the real authority and what they care about.

Fixing things like this is probably boring and detailed. It requires knowing something about what everyone does, which is pretty hard for large orgs. I don’t know how anyone can actually get their head around it. There’s plenty of inefficiency in the federal government, no doubt about it, I can speak from experience. But DOGE is obviously not the way. Is shuffling the org chart around going to do it? Hopefully they know what they’re doing.

 

[WaveMotionGum]

Spreading inefficient pork-barrel spending over as many states as possible is how NASA stayed funded by the Senate for many decades no?

 

[Andrewcw]

Sounds great. But the bureaucracy exists because congress kind of doesn't write blank checks to NASA. So over the years they had to compete internally for use of the funding they do get.

When the politician doesn't get their state to get jobs from the funding round will they still vote to fund NASA.

 

[hrearden]

This is all fantastic news. Isaacman is finally implementing the management changes necessary to return NASA to doing things.

 

[Wickwick]

Let's hope this doesn't turn into "move fast and break things."

Why not? Anecdote time.

When I was a graduate student, we used to have lots of undergrads work in our lab for the summer sessions. During the introductory meetings, my words of advice to them were, "if you don't break anything while you're here this summer then you haven't been working hard enough." That shocked most of them, but it set expectations. For the most part, one learns something much more in-depth by having to fix what's broken than simply by using a functional tool. Additionally, people afraid to fail are afraid to take risks that might end up being rewarding. Being an educational environment, the risks that they might break something were vastly outweighed by what they'd learn having to fix what they did wrong.

NASA, fundamentally, is terrified of failure. "Failure is not an option" is a horrible ethos for a research and science-based agency. Sure, it can't be all risks all the time and when humans are involved, the LoC should be kept to a minimum. But NASA could certainly benefit from quite a bit more risk taking (especially as involves anything career-wise) to move just a bit faster.

 

[randomcat]

Cutting the fat always sounds good, but in reality they inevitably end up cutting muscle instead.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

"Efficiency!" is always the rallying cry...of people who don't understand that "efficiency" was the rallying cry for the last 50 years. And that is a large part of why things are the way they are. More management is usually called for--because oversight is demanded when things go sideways (overruns or accidents etc).

Every large org stuggles with needing more management because of all the teams working on all they do...who don't have time to jump across departments, because they have FTE work of their own and not time for more inter-departmental meetings.

 

[randomuser42]

Things like this are very hard to evaluate from the outside, I would guess even for a journalist who is familiar with more of the details. The internal lines of communication and responsibility in any organization are complex. I can’t even always keep it straight at my job who has the real authority and what they care about.

Fixing things like this is probably boring and detailed. It requires knowing something about what everyone does, which is pretty hard for large orgs. I don’t know how anyone can actually get their head around it. There’s plenty of inefficiency in the federal government, no doubt about it, I can speak from experience. But DOGE is obviously not the way. Is shuffling the org chart around going to do it? Hopefully they know what they’re doing.

The term "fiefdom" is very commonly used when referring to the NASA field centers and the directorates, and it's pretty accurate. In the grand scheme of things this actually seems like a relatively small step towards addressing that and I think it'll have a small positive impact, but small one way or the other, but at the same time it's sort of an obvious step to take.

Yes, it is shuffling org charts, but the lines on those org charts are important for figuring out where money and resources come from and where they go. If you have too many lines those fiefdoms get into fights. If you have too few there's not enough oversight. These changes basically take away a couple of lines. I don't think it'll be a thunderous impact to either efficiency or oversight.

 

[equine_physics]

Things like this are very hard to evaluate from the outside, I would guess even for a journalist who is familiar with more of the details. The internal lines of communication and responsibility in any organization are complex. I can’t even always keep it straight at my job who has the real authority and what they care about.

Fixing things like this is probably boring and detailed. It requires knowing something about what everyone does, which is pretty hard for large orgs. I don’t know how anyone can actually get their head around it. There’s plenty of inefficiency in the federal government, no doubt about it, I can speak from experience. But DOGE is obviously not the way. Is shuffling the org chart around going to do it? Hopefully they know what they’re doing.

I agree. My thoughts on reading this are Isaacman may be apply a management approach of manage the people, not so much the project. I have worked in places where the very top people would micromanage down to a developer level and the result would be stressed out employees and poor results.

Each layer going up manages only what is directly below and the concerns then simplify to "On time? On budget?" the lowest direct manager of engineers can apply the same approach as the CEO to his directorates. When you manage the people, again my experience a higher moral, quality work, and more engagement.

Time will tell if Isaacman will have the time to be allowed to work this new Org Chart. This Administration tends to not like Agencies having success that does good for Americans.

 

[sapphir8]

Hmm, didn’t know that JSC didn’t get direct funding.

 

[mpetty423]

Things like this are very hard to evaluate from the outside, I would guess even for a journalist who is familiar with more of the details. The internal lines of communication and responsibility in any organization are complex. I can’t even always keep it straight at my job who has the real authority and what they care about.

Fixing things like this is probably boring and detailed. It requires knowing something about what everyone does, which is pretty hard for large orgs. I don’t know how anyone can actually get their head around it. There’s plenty of inefficiency in the federal government, no doubt about it, I can speak from experience. But DOGE is obviously not the way. Is shuffling the org chart around going to do it? Hopefully they know what they’re doing.

Exactly.

How well something like this goes is very rarely about ethos or plans or visions or whatever.

Success or failure nearly completely and totally depends upon how well leadership knows the internal structure of the org, and how well they can realign it given the political and power landscape internally to the org, and how well they can motivate the new org to accept these changes and use them to better the organization.

In short, it's wholly opaque to us what to do and why, and whether they're good calls or not and whether its going to work or not, and so support here is all about whether you trust the administrator in charge or not.

Isaacman seems to be a guy that I'm willing to trust on things like this. For all the shit show of our current admin, he seems like an incredibly competent and thoughtful individual, and so in that vein, I'm supportive of whatever he gets done here.

 

[blookoolaid]

I really like the plan to provide baseline funding to all field centers. If your job isnt constantly on the line its a lot easier to cooperate with other field centers and come up with options that benefit NASA as a whole. Its all about incentives and it sounds like these changes are designed to mitigate the worst of the perverse incentives present in NASAs current funding structure.

 

[randomuser42]

Wasn't just putting a positive spin on yet another massive budget cut for the American space program in general.

They still haven't passed a budget...

"another" budget cut? NASA's actual final, full, enacted budgets increased in FY2025 and FY2026, and will probably increase again in FY2027. The big issue was this time last year NASA civil servants were being told they should consider taking early retirement or the DRP to avoid being RIF'd (based on the PBR, which was a big problem), this year they're trying to hire lots of people (although mostly trying to convert contractor positions). The absence of a budget makes PPBE hard, obviously, but NASA has successfully navigated this situation before (in Trump's first term PACE and RST/WFIRST were regularly being called to be cancelled in the PBR and now PACE is in space and RST is going up in a few months. The reaction last summer was rooted in DOGE-shit and not being fully certain where Congress would stand on NASA's budget).

 

[RunningChoux]

If success means awarding the contract politically to the University of Texas, to then have them underprepared and underequipped to do the job, to then have the University of California just come back, but this time as a “joint venture” to let private contractors get a piece of the pie… sure. Success.

Nitpick for a not-uncommon misconception: JPL is run by California Institute of Technology (CalTech), which is a private university and not part of either the University of California or California State University systems (local rivalry joke with Harvey Mudd College about "Pasadena Community College" aside).

EDIT for correction/context by spopepro and fl4Ksh: the DoE national labs are indeed run by the University of California system. Given the context that JPL is a little different than those, I still wanted to call it out that opening the JPL management for bid wouldn't move management away from UC.

 

[randomuser42]

NASA, fundamentally, is terrified of failure. "Failure is not an option" is a horrible ethos for a research and science-based agency.

You're not going to hear anyone from the research and science sides of NASA unironically say this quote from the Apollo 13 movie (which is all it is, Gene Kranz never said it, though he did like it and titled his memoirs after it, it is certainly a fine motto for manned spaceflight mission control).

 

[Jeff S]

Let's hope this doesn't turn into "move fast and break things."

Also, I can't help but think this will also surely turn into:

Give big $$$ contracts to Trump-and-ally-invested companies, especially AI. I'm guessing NASA is going to send some big contracts to Elon Musk. Maybe others as well.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

I really like the plan to provide baseline funding to all field centers. If your job isnt constantly on the line its a lot easier to cooperate with other field centers and come up with options that benefit NASA as a whole. Its all about incentives and it sounds like these changes are designed to mitigate the worst of the perverse incentives present in NASAs current funding structure.

Counterpoint: No it doesn't. See Congress and how they forced projects like the Senate Launch System on NASA.

If you want to make NASA run like Meta--where employees worry about losing their jobs due to Neutron Welch style management. OK. But what will happen? The skilled talent that doesn't want to deal with that crap (who does?)--will leave and JAXA or ESA or other orgs in countries far less outright hostile to science will be more than happy to hire them. In fact they already are.

 

[spopepro]

Nitpick for a not-uncommon misconception: JPL is run by California Institute of Technology (CalTech), which is a private university and not part of either the University of California or California State University systems (local rivalry joke with Harvey Mudd College about "Pasadena Community College" aside).

Yes, of course. But the dept of energy laboratories mentioned in the quote are not JPL.

 

[JohnCarter17]

I was looking up Lori Glaze. Apparently she is married to Pantera's frontman Terry Glaze.

Question, wasn't there a dodgy reorg in launch operations a couple years ago where the female head was shifted to Commercial Crew and someone else got her job? I may have some of this wrong. So many acronyms.
Has that situation changed in this reorg?

 

[JohnCarter17]

I really like the plan to provide baseline funding to all field centers. If your job isnt constantly on the line its a lot easier to cooperate with other field centers and come up with options that benefit NASA as a whole. Its all about incentives and it sounds like these changes are designed to mitigate the worst of the perverse incentives present in NASAs current funding structure.

I never realized the situation was that stupid. It sounds like the USSR aerospace bureaus fighting for resources.

 

[CrystalCowboy]

“When you step back, it is worth considering how many additional missions we could have undertaken with the resources lost to program cancellations and cost overruns over the years,” Isaacman wrote.

'With the money spent on programs that were canceled, we could have run more programs.'

- Deep or Derp? Maybe you should have just finished those programs instead of cancelling them.

 

[Jeff S]

I sort of wonder why there still seems to be a large focus on human space flight?

Haven't we learned that probes and drones are much, much cheaper, and can do things that realisticallly can't currently be done? What exactly is the value proposition of sending humans to space instead of unmanned vehicles?

We've had unmanned explorer drones on Mars for what, 20 years now? We've not sent any humans.

We could presumably send construction drones if we want to construct something like mining, processing, and manufacturing facilities.

And, it seems like having unmanned systems start construction, is almost what you HAVE to do to prepare the moon and mars for later human missions. Although again, it's not clear what value sending humans even brings to the table?

I suspect that sending humans is considered a priority, because I think, I don't know if international space law even actually covers this, but my bet is that Trump, Musk, etc think that sending a human crew to some place allows the US to claim jurisdictional territory - "We got people there first so it's ours now. We own it."

Which is a pretty ridiculous way to handle territorial rights.

 

[Louis XVI]

What’s the old saying? “Cheap, fast, good: you can pick two.” I think I know which two they’re choosing.

 

[Jeff S]

What’s the old saying? “Cheap, fast, good: you can pick two.” I think I know which two they’re choosing.

Except I think they're not. They're going to pick "fast, expensive, mediocre". Because everything Trump does is a grift. He and his buddies are going to drain the Treasury dry. If you put money into "good", that's reduces your profit margins.

 

[Wickwick]

You're not going to hear anyone from the research and science sides of NASA unironically say this quote from the Apollo 13 movie (which is all it is, Gene Kranz never said it, though he did like it and titled his memoirs after it, it is certainly a fine motto for manned spaceflight mission control).

The risk aversion is pervasive in those two communities because if things don't work exactly as promised, funding will be cut and moved to other programs. As such, R&D programs are far more incremental than they could otherwise be.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

I sort of wonder why there still seems to be a large focus on human space flight?

Haven't we learned that probes and drones are much, much cheaper, and can do things that realisticallly can't currently be done? What exactly is the value proposition of sending humans to space instead of unmanned vehicles?

We've had unmanned explorer drones on Mars for what, 20 years now? We've not sent any humans.

We could presumably send construction drones if we want to construct something like mining, processing, and manufacturing facilities.

AND, it seems like having unmanned systems start construction, is almost what you HAVE to do to prepare the moon and mars for later human missions. Although again, it's not clear what value sending humans even brings to the table?

I suspect that sending humans is considered a priority, because I think, I don't know if international space law even actually covers this, but my bet is that Trump, Musk, etc think that sending a human crew to some place allows the US to claim jurisdictional territory - "We got people there first so it's ours now. We own it."

Which is a pretty ridiculous way to handle territorial rights.

It is all about PR and imagery.

Why did large portions of the federal government get sent to work remotely? Deeper hiring pool, office real estate is stupidly expensive operationally anywhere especially DC, and Paul Ryan wanted to save money wherever he could. And so they did. Why RTO? Screw those yuppie government employees they should suffer like everyone else!

 

[sporkinum]

I think this article can be summed up as “We will fire anybody in our way and funnel funding to our friends.”

No different that everything else on this administration.

100%. It's grifting everywhere. Never thought Trump could destroy NASA too.

 

[EllPeaTea]

I was looking up Lori Glaze. Apparently she is married to Pantera's frontman Terry Glaze.

Question, wasn't there a dodgy reorg in launch operations a couple years ago where the female head was shifted to Commercial Crew and someone else got her job? I may have some of this wrong. So many acronyms.
Has that situation changed in this reorg?

They've basically re-unified the 2 HSF directorates. When Doug Loverro got canned (for trying to help Boeing win the HSF contract), Kathy Lueders got promoted to replace him (she had previously been head of Commercial Crew). She was in charge for the HSF award to SpaceX. Shortly afterwards, HSF got split it in two - Kathy got the "operational" half (ISS + commercial crew), while Jim Free was brought in to lead the Artemis program part.

https://www.space.com/nasa-splits-human-spaceflight-directorate-two-branches

 

[Wickwick]

I sort of wonder why there still seems to be a large focus on human space flight?

Haven't we learned that probes and drones are much, much cheaper, and can do things that realisticallly can't currently be done? What exactly is the value proposition of sending humans to space instead of unmanned vehicles?

We've had unmanned explorer drones on Mars for what, 20 years now? We've not sent any humans.

We could presumably send construction drones if we want to construct something like mining, processing, and manufacturing facilities.

AND, it seems like having unmanned systems start construction, is almost what you HAVE to do to prepare the moon and mars for later human missions. Although again, it's not clear what value sending humans even brings to the table?

I suspect that sending humans is considered a priority, because I think, I don't know if international space law even actually covers this, but my bet is that Trump, Musk, etc think that sending a human crew to some place allows the US to claim jurisdictional territory - "We got people there first so it's ours now. We own it."

Which is a pretty ridiculous way to handle territorial rights.

Human spaceflight is still a thing because it's the most important thing NASA does to the average American taxpayer.

This is the nature of NASA. The Administration fights with Congress annually on how a budget is to be allocated then each group fights with each other for whatever sliver they can justify taking from any given program. HSF is the largest slice allocated by Congress because that's what their electorate wants. So NASA is still in the HSF game.

 

[fl4Ksh]

Nitpick for a not-uncommon misconception: JPL is run by California Institute of Technology (CalTech), which is a private university and not part of either the University of California or California State University systems (local rivalry joke with Harvey Mudd College about "Pasadena Community College" aside).

Right. The U. of CA runs Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and the Los Alamos National Lab, all of which are major labs belonging to the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

[randomuser42]

100%. It's grifting everywhere. Never thought Trump could destroy NASA too.

Trump doesn't give a shit about any of this. His administration (not him personally because he just doesn't care, but the anti-science anti civil servant weirdos in OMB and the Treasury) would like to cut NASA's budget, but they don't get to do that. Congress rejected their last budget cut, and I don't recall Trump saying one single word about that, so again, he just doesn't care.

This reorg is orthogonal to all of that. Trump really doesn't have all that much control over how NASA spends its (small) budget.