NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

The US space agency, NASA, is famous for looking to the future. However, the fiasco of the last few days has cast doubt on the present, let alone what the coming weeks, months, or years might hold. The Trump administration has started terminating federal employees in the probationary period of their employment – usually the …

[Gary Stewart]

The plan...

is to do as much damage to as many government departments as possible with as little effort as possible, AKA "plan? we don't need no stinkin plan". Also, as an American I find it insulting that anybody believes that anyone in the current administration has enough cognitive ability to actually formulate a plan. Then again Elon probably does but it's not what the Orange Julius (Caesar) thinks it is.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: The plan...

Musk could not plan paypal into a growing company. The direction to look in is the guy who replaced Musk at paypal turned it into a >$billion company (which gave Musk the early funding for Tesla and SpaceX). That was Peter Thiel. Trump had the required popular following to become president but is completely clueless. The real work gets done by the next level down: Vice President Vance was selected by Thiel. Thiel clearly has the ability to run a business but is also deeply invested in bat shit crazy ideas. The current stuff is so wild that the only way to accept he believes it is to look at the long progression over time. (For that last link, read all the way through the correction.)

[Eclectic Man]

Re: The plan...

Interesting article about blood. Blood doping* has been around for years in athletics: Lasse Viren allegedly used it when he won Olympic gold medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m, at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, but it is now illegal in sport.

(There is also altitude training, but that is legal, and has its own disadvantages. The England (association) football team tried it at one World Cup, but got it wrong, and were very lethargic in one crucial match. At altitude you blood thickens, so when you return to sea-level you need a few days for your blood to regain its fluidity for the greatest health benefits.)

If you want blood transfusions from young people, I wonder whether you can freeze your own teenage blood, and get it back safely in middle age. (Much too late for me, sadly, but some of you could still save yourselves!)

Basically, tinkering with you blood can be tricky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasse_Virén

*an athlete gives blood which is then frozen. The athlete trains, recoups the lost blood, and then, just before a major sporting event, such as the Olympics, the donated blood is re-introduced, so the athlete is somewhat over-supplied with blood, which gives them an advantage in aerobic competitions such as long distance running or long cycle races. Thera are dangers as excess blood can be problematic, even if it is your own.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Blood

Althletics and longevity are two different targets. The step you missed for athletics is concentrating the red blood cells before injecting them back. The higher concentration causes better transport of oxygen and a boost to endurance pace - or a heart attack.

The longevity target involves removing the red blood cells from other people's blood and injecting the rest. There are some badly/maliciously designed experiments to provide a veneer of science to the claims of health benefits. For now, think Theranos but with a better focus on getting investment from the rich and gullible. Perhaps there might be something real in future, but wait for a peer reviewed study before handing over money to someone better skilled at fraud than Elizabeth Holmes.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Blood

Thanks for the information, but please explain why I deserve 3 downvotes for that mistake.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: The plan...

"If you want blood transfusions from young people, I wonder whether you can freeze your own teenage blood, and get it back safely in middle age."

Sort of an auto-vampirism?

Really would you actually want the frenzied untempered cocktail of teen hormones and naked lust coursing through your mid life veins?

Think back to those times and think of the wenches you lusted after and with the benefit of hindsight would have avoided like the plague. Barbarella? Ok conceded. Your wife - not my fault that you didn't have an imagination that extended to exogamy.

Never quite occurred to me that all the obscenely wealthy and powerful from Randy Rupert to Muddled Musk all share an insane fear of their own death which given some of the things for which they will have been responsible, I imagine they wouldn't be too keen on expediting any potential interview with their maker.

Randy won't admit he is done and the Reaper had given up:

"HAVE YOUR OWN WAY BUT WHEN YOUR CARCASS IS FALLING OFF YOUR BONES IT WILL BE THE RAT HERE WHO PERFORCE WILL PAINFULLY DETACH YOUR SOUL PIECEMEAL ^{_{(squeak) PAINFULLY PIECEMEAL! (squeak)}}."

Reminds me of Homer Simpson's boss Mr Burns who I recall was afflicted with so many fatal conditions whose equisite balance like that of Calufrax's Queen Xanxia's time dams kept him not unalive.

These Midas clowns might ask for immortality but forgetting to also ask for eternal youth (like Eos for her lover Tithonus.) It probably never occurs to any seeker of immortality that even in the body of a youth a 1000 year old mind will still have decayed or at best become someone unrecognisable and likely abhorrent to the original. Most of what defines a person's identity is ephemeral and is eventually washed away by tides of time leaving the personality that they supported to struggle and drown in the waters of oblivion.

I can only guess that the madness at the core of the idea of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the hope that if the flesh won't serve the needs of these seekers of immortality that they might transfer their personality into an artificial "brain" and continue inside a robotic shell until the technology exists to clone and grow a copy of their original carcass and transfer from their AGI abode into their new body.

Looks like in a few decades there will be a lively market for barrels of rotten fish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The plan...

Interesting read on Vance. Seems we have 2 groups with the same aims competing. The Trump/Vance/Musk trilogy will win because they are more intelligent and the wokes simply don't make sense and are too obviously nuts. What is it with people that when they achieve great success they develop a god complex?

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: The plan...

"What is it with people that when they achieve great success they develop a god complex?"

Hubris which WikiP "describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term arrogance comes from the Latin adrogare, meaning "to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people". To arrogate means "to claim or seize without justification... To make undue claims to having", or "to claim or seize without right... to ascribe or attribute without reason". The term pretension is also associated with the term hubris, but is not synonymous with it."

A cap the fits the current culprits perfectly I think.

The ancient used the term to describe "transgressions against the gods" and "insolent encroachment upon the rights of others" all of which invariably incurred the wrath of those gods and the destruction of the transgressor. So we can but hope but it is also said the same gods first make mad those that they would destroy (collateral damage notwithstanding.)

[pryannow]

Re: The plan...

I can tell you are not following the actions and lies by Musk trump and vance,

1) stating $50 million spent on condoms -- FALSE $5 million for birth control and GYN care

2) Fire all the people that handle nuclear program – had to back a rehire

3) Say’s 10s of million are dead and receiving SS benefits – FALSE as this issue is with COBOL and DoB field, if they stopped for 60 seconds and analyzed it, they would know it was false (only 68 million receive SS benefits, so 30% are dead). Also, there is a stop gap and requires acknowledging at age of 115 that you are alive

4) Says we are paying venodrs on the list of not to do business, did they have a contract priorto being put on the list?

5) Was going to show us all this on 2/14, 2/15, 2/16....

6) Look at the backgournd of these DOGE people

7) trump never said anything truthful.

Also think about how to transfer company knowledge, hint bring in younger people and let them learn from the older employees, they are firing all the new workers.

If you consider these people smart on this subject, please explain?

Trump, Vance and Musk are clueless.

[DS999]

Re: The plan...

Dunno what the plan is, but I'm sure step one of it is to insure that when NASA returns to the Moon (whenever that finally happens) it will be a mission composed of all white men, rather than a crew consisting of two white men, one black man and one woman as was announced a couple years ago. They can't have that, white men are ALWAYS the most qualified in the MAGA world!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: The plan...

Yes, as per Trumps Anti-DEI stance (which I sort of agree with but for very different reasons, eg affirmative action and hiring targets), his new "meritocracy" rules don't seem to apply to him in any way shape or form. His criterion for hiring new cabinet members, agency heads or any other position he has control over, is that they are loyal Republicans Trumpers above all else, no matter their actual and relevant qualifications.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: The plan...

"White men are ALWAYS the most qualified in the MAGA world!"

English being what she is, "qualified" can have the sense "subject to conditions" or "incomplete" eg "a qualified success" or "not an unqualified success."

This might not be the case with the creole spoken in the US which has increasingly scant resemblance to our King's English.

So perhaps we might translate the above as

"White men are always the most incomplete or lacking in the MAGA world!" - Which is almost axiomatic and no ones intelligence is strained in considering where these magaboys' manifold and manifest deficiencies lie.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Artemis 3

NASA's Artemis feature still has "NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon". I am amazed that has lasted so long.

[MacGuffin]

Re: Artemis 3

Someone is in trouble for that and I suspect it will be "remedied" soon.

I'm trying to locate an easy link where a US congressional law from 1866 forbade putting live people on currency (thus "dead presidents" referring to money), but the link found no longer works on the US Treasury web page. Dead link below.

https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Pages/1800-1899.aspx

[DS999]

Elon may be saving NASA for last for his DOGE purge

Perhaps trying to figure out a way to fire every last staffer at NASA and redirect its entire budget to SpaceX to do whatever he wants to do with it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: The plan...

"Then again Elon probably does"

Stop right there! Please present any verifiable evidence to back up that statement.

[cmb11]

Re: The plan...

The plan is simple, one of the biggest drivers for interest rates is unemployment numbers, you dump a few hundred thousand people in to the unemployment lines, interest rates will drop. The "Home Alone II extra" said he will start brining down interest rates day one, this is how.

[Burgha2]

Re: The plan...

'The "Home Alone II extra" said he will start brining down interest rates day one, this is how.'

Dude, c'mon. Trump doesn't care about anything he said before the election. He DGAF about interest rates. This is about making the US into a right wing, one party state.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: The plan...

Perhaps DoGE, Musk’s Tween Army and Russ Voight mistook NASA’s mission as DEI and mixed up aliens with illegal aliens.

They are probably more familiar with Aliens 2 and ST: The Motion Picture than Voyager and Pioneer probes.

[The Indomitable Gall]

Re: The plan...

Yes, but the plan hasn't been thought out. Trump won't always be in the Whitehouse, and conflict of interest things hang around and even if the president can pardon Musk for the conflict of interest things (not sure whether he can or not, this is a very theoretical "even if") the criminal pardon won't affect civil actions. I can totally imagine the US government nationalising SpaceX because they've profited from things that should absolutely not have ever happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA, ..., provides a three-to-one return on the dollars invested in it

That is probably somewhat less than the ROI on education, and the current disadministration wants to abolish that too.

The short of it is that this disadministration does not see a future for the people of the US, only for themselves. So all investment in a future of the US would be wasted for them and should be discontinued.

The longer story is that the convicted criminal and private school swindler got elected by peddling nightmares about the future of the US. It is natural that he feels obliged to make them happen.

[HereIAmJH]

Move fast, break things

The short of it is that this disadministration does not see a future for the people of the US, only for themselves.

Things are being handled like a corporate raid of the 80s. It's easier to make money by tearing down something and selling off the parts than it is to build something.

What will happen is they'll 'cut all this waste' (with waste being any program they don't agree with), declare huge savings, then give the wealthy more tax breaks and corporations more welfare. When it comes time to repair the mess they'll drop another $8-10 trillion on the debt and walk away.

They have to move fast because they don't own all the Federal judges, and some are willing to block them. And GOP congressmen might actually grow a backbone when all their constituents lose their jobs and might not vote for them again.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Move fast, break things

"And GOP congressmen might actually grow a backbone when all their constituents lose their jobs and might not vote for them again."

There's already signs of that. Interesting, and in a way sad, that Mitch McConnel just quit. He seems to have been one of the few to call Trump out. Although he said he made the decision about a year ago. Sounds like shortly after the Jan 6th fiasco and has sorta stood up to Trump ever since.

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Move fast, break things

Sounds like shortly after the Jan 6th fiasco and has sorta stood up to Trump ever since.

Well, except for the impeachment where he backtracked on calling Trump responsible and made sure he was able to run again.

He's worried his freeze ups will get worse and his staff won't be able cover for him. At least this way he can choose his successor. He's still Moscow Mitch.

[cmdrklarg]

Re: Move fast, break things

McConnell had his chance to stop the Florida Orange Man... twice! And he was the architect of our current 6-3 conservative SCOTUS by stealing Obama's pick as well as fast tracking RBG's replacement.

By his actions Mitch is arguably the person most responsible for the FOM's rise to power and current threat to democracy.

[Grunchy]

Re: Move fast, break things

Trump has limited power.

First, he’s done by Jan 20, 2029.

Second, Congress and Senate ain’t stupid. They can impeach him any second he gets too out of line.

But they want to make sure they can install President Vance first…

[EricM]

After looking at the first 4 weeks, I'd guess Republicans will continue to follow Germany's NSDAP playbook of 1933.

1) Get democratically elected

2) disrupt existing institutions

3) Establish a direct chain of command to executive agencies. <-- USA is currently here

4) Hijack legislative power over to the executive branch ( like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933)

But depending on how the various legal challenges of the Executiv Orders play out, step 4 might not even require new legislation. If SCOTUS sides with Trump, they can effectively turn the US into a middle-age Kingdom.

I honestly would not have expected the effective checks and balances of the U.S. to be even weaker than those of the Weimar Republic (Germany 1918 to 1933) In Germany 1933 this process 1)-3) took about 3 months, Musk/Trump execute this proces in just weeks.

And even the provided rationale is identical: The government must be abe to "work effectively" to "save the country"

So the overall plan seems to be unchecked power for the current far right leader to morph the oldest Democracy into a Dictatorship.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

5, drive out all the scientists and engineers and then wonder why your wonder weapons don't work and you are in danger of being vaporized by deplorables working for the new economic powerhouse

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

6, fork off to Mars. 'cos the Moon is already inhabited by their predecessors, i.e., the pals from '33

[BartyFartsLast]

Ah, reminds me, need to look for the sequel to Iron Skies

[Roj Blake]

Re: Sequel to Iron Skies

Don't - it's not even the fun type of awful.

[John Brown (no body)]

"the oldest Democracy"

You forget the quotes! If not, and you think that, much of Europe and many other countries would like a word on the definition of "oldest".

[Eclectic Man]

NASA budget

I believe that the NASA budget is voted on by Congress, so is immune to cuts by the current President. Of course he may be able to cut the level of employment, but if Congress has voted the money, that is it.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: NASA budget

>but if Congress has voted the money, that is it.

Remember the golden rule - the one with access to the bank transfer system makes the rules

[abend0c4]

Re: NASA budget

Congress does not, at present, seem to be terribly bothered that the various agencies for which it has approved budgets are being systematically gutted.

The Senate and the House seem divided over how to progress the next funding bill, but they both seem more interested in further debt-funded tax cuts than on what's actually going on in government. They're falling over each other to come up with Trump's most-favoured plan.

The checks and balances can only work if the relevant parties do their jobs.

[MachDiamond]

Re: NASA budget

"They're falling over each other to come up with Trump's most-favoured plan."

Given the news reporting, they are all on holiday and just allowing Trump to do as he likes by Executive Order as if handed a sword by some lady lying around in a pond handing out cutlery.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: NASA budget

"handed a sword by some lady lying around in a pond handing out cutlery."

Monty Python obviously hadn't considered the US political system where some fay Limnetic Lady dispensing ironmongery would be a far more rational and ultimately more effective method of governing the nation. Trump's penchant for pussy grabbing would likely mean he would have received Caliban from the Lady with force, point first.

"You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ... I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"

[Ian Johnston]

Re: NASA budget

American peasants want to be repressed, it seems.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: NASA budget

"Of course he may be able to cut the level of employment, but if Congress has voted the money, that is it."

If you decimate the employees so you end up not spending all that budget, guess what happens to next years budget.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NASA budget

It goes to SpaceX?

[AVR]

Re: NASA budget

To be clear, Trump has claimed the power to impound money voted by Congress for some purpose.

[imanidiot]

Re: NASA budget

It should be but the current president doesn't seem too interested in following the "how it should be" rules and instead makes it up as he goes along. And so far, far too many branches of government seem to just be going along with it.

[Irongut]

Two years?!?!?!

> probationary period of their employment – usually the first year or two of a new position

In the civilised world the probationary period last for 3 - 6 months. Even when I worked for a NASA contractor & giant US engineering company my probation period was 6 months.

It never ceases to amaze me how free Americans are to be fucked in the ass by their employer, government and gun loving neghbour.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile they want to jack the military budget by another $85 f***ing billion.

[Flocke Kroes]

Is that what is will cost to crush any final resistance from Americans?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the military will get that far, it may be touching naivete but I would hope they have some sort of sense of honour and will refuse to turn their guns on their own citizens.

But I will admit to a popcorn munching voyeuristic fascination if the 2a nuts decide to take on the military for refusing Trumplethinskin's orders.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Always amazes me how the 2a nuts completely ignore trumptys attempts to overturn the 14th..., thats going to be the real testing point when the case arrives at the supreme court.

If the court backs trumpty, the US is over as it will show that any president can ignore the constitution as he/she feels fit and thus rule unchecked (already anything he does as president is not illegal)

[Anonymous Coward]

13th, 14th, 15th and of course the 19th.

[DiViDeD]

Re: jack the military budget

That money's going to be needed to maintain order if the US population ever start to understand how f*cked they are

[gecho]

Unions

The plan is to fire as many unionized employees across the government as possible and if replacements are deemed necessary contract that work out to private companies with ties to Trump.

[Flocke Kroes]

re: If there is a plan... what could it be?

If you start with the unshakable belief that someone is a stable genius then stupid actions followed by either reversals of doubling down require convoluted explanations. The most common are "It's 4-D chess" or "Deep state". I prefer Occam's razor: the Trump regime is infested with idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re: If there is a plan... what could it be?

For someone who can play 4d chess... Trump sure has a difficulty communicating his ideas.

[that one in the corner]

NASA: famous worldwide and instantly recognisable

"Sir, the survey reports came in: more people across the world have heard of and like NASA than they do Tesla!"

"Musk SMASH!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a better explanation is that billionaires are now actively running the government and their priorities are not those of anyone else.

Disbanding government agencies so they can't interfere is good; crashing parts of the stock market is good, cutting workers wages is good (although making people work for nothing is better), cutting higher rate taxes is excellent, as is acquiring other taxpayer's money.

Longer term they want full control over how the effects of climate change are handled, ensuring their needs & wants remain the priority consideration.

[Bebu sa Ware]

A Gift to the PRC

All the Chinese need do is announce a program to deal with the potential hazard of a 2024 YR4 impact and get a PR coup with a "soft power" bonus for largely words.

Should the risk of an impact in 2032 crystallize into a certainty the PRC should have more than enough capability to avert any catastrophe assuming none of the lower 48 is the impact site.

Ironic that the Trump administration with all his anti Chinese bluster is actually through the moronic actions of Musk and co. moving the geopolitical centre of gravity away from Washington towards Peking.

Longtime friends and allies are seriously asking whether from here the US can be considered a trusted partner in anything and are considering alternative strategic arrangements for their region.

[Zolko]

Re: A Gift to the PRC

Longtime friends and allies...

you are naming the exact problem : nations don't have "friends" and the USA never saw Europe as an ally, more like a vassal, may-be as a potential enemy, as Biden has clearly demonstrated with the North Stream pipeline explosion. So the real problem are people who were looking at the USA as a benevolent rich uncle : this rich uncle is now showing how he became rich and that he's not benevolent. That's called growing up to the real world.

But the real problem re-NASA is that we don't have any European space-program anymore. If we did, we could laugh about the US blunder instead of crying for a lost love. The US space program never saw Europe as friends or allies, you fantasized only about that

[Robert 22]

Re: A Gift to the PRC

The US sponsored the Marshall Plan and provided a great deal of economic and military assistance to Europe after WW 2. There were other things such as foiling the French/British scheme to seize the Suez Canal and giving Panama ownership of the Panama Canal. Sure they have also done some pretty awful things, especially in South America and Latin America, but they at least paid lip service to higher ideals. In an unbelievably short time they have squandered an incredible amount of good will, by completely abandoning any ethical or moral compass and demonstrating a obsession with grabbing resources on a scale comparable to Hitler's Germany.

[Sleep deprived]

An asteroid redirect mission?

To Mar-a-Lago, the Oval office or the Trump golf course? Humm, let's have a look at the presidential agenda.

[steviebuk]

say it like it is

Whats wrong with writers currently? Orange tango man and the Thunderbirds reject (jd vance) claim free speech, so surely you can give your opinion.

And that opinion would be "south african hitler appears to be cutting NASA jobs so he can either steal the engineers by hiring them at spacex or he's just cutting NASA so they will, for years, need ro rely on spacex. Because its funny that in all this cost cutting, south african hitler hasn't cut any funding his companies receive."

And the fact tango man attempted to sign an order the other day that states only him and the doj can state what laws are to be followed, is a MASSIVE step into dictatorship. Someone in power needs to stop the fucking orange mad man.

[JohnSheeran]

It's really funny how everyone reads so much into this. This is typical behavior from Corporate America. Ready, fire, aim. I've seen it so many times before when it's "cost cutting time" that it's laughable at this point.

[martinusher]

Probationary is worse than it sounds

Although its common for new hires to be probationary for three months in the US the way the government is using this on their employees is quite novel. Two years probationary employment is excessive for any organization but the real kicker is that you don't need to be a new hire ---if you get promoted or reassigned then you're returned to probationary status for another two years.

The effect of all this is making a substantial part of the Federal workforce 'at will' employees. This is actually the way many -- if not most -- of us now work in the US thanks to 'right to work' legislation. This, plus the increasing use of short term contracts, has made job security a historical footnote and coincidentally explains why Gen Z are so disconnected from the workplace (the way changes are applied is usually to the newer/younger employees first to avoid spooking the existing workforce).

(I daresay a lot of this will be familiar to UK readers.)

[DiViDeD]

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

One of the main points of contention has been that people who may have served in the civil service for 20 or 30 years are deemed to be 'on probation' whenever they take up a new position or department. So you have lifelong public servants who are being "let go"because they recently changed departments, were seconded to a new team or got promoted.

[Robert 22]

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

It is perverse that it is a literal case where being promoted gets you fired. And I thought the US had bought into the idea that high performers deserve to be rewarded.

[Robert 22]

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

If he were alive now, Orwell would, among other things, be writing about how language has been perverted in the US e.g., "Right to Work" is code for "we can fire you for any reason or just because we can."

[RedGreen925]

what's the plan?

Even a blind man can se them morons have no plan other than to cause as much chaos, misery and death as possible. That is the extent of their supposed planning with the goal of killing as many of their and other people around the world as they can. They are upset they only managed to kill off a million or so last time the scumbag was in power they need to up their game to kill a few millions more.

[Grunchy]

NASA?

This is shaping up to be a “Southern Hemisphere” problem.

NASA will accept payment in rare earths, to solve your problem.

No guarantee. Plus, NASA gets the meteorite salvage.

[TeeCee]

The reason is in there.

NASA is also the very definition of soft power..

Which means that he's going to have to really fuck it up to give Roscosmos the lead.

I'm afraid that it's becoming obvious that the ex-Soviet guy who outed Trump as a KGB asset the other day was telling the truth. Fortunately for Putin's little bitch, he's already made sure that any organisation that might investigate this is now run by one of the most lickspittle of his toadies.

[Kurgan]

Re: The reason is in there.

Not Roscosmos, but China.

China has (more or less) a working space station right now. It has (more or less) working launchers, and launches multiple missions every month now. China is building its "starlink" equivalent, has its GPS system in place and working.

Roscosmos has a working (albeit old) launcher but not more than that, it also has no money for science because of the war.

[TeeCee]

Re: The reason is in there.

Maybe, but the psychotic nazi pulling Trump's strings isn't telling him to make China's space agency look like the world leader.

[Kurgan]

Re: The reason is in there.

Yes, Putin does not want to empower China, but this is what's happening right now. Then, once Putin has secured the US as a friend and Europe as a slave, they (Putin and Trump) will try and conquer / destroy China, and that is where WW3 happens.

[bill 27]

I'm not worried. The solution is simple, Don't Look Up.

[Robert 22]

I understand that some of the outer planets in the Solar system have cores consisting of diamond. I suppose NASA is being punished for failing to follow up on an obvious business opportunity.

[Ryan D]

Dear Nuclear weapons experts and Rocket scientists

The Persian government has jobs waiting for you. We can guarantee better pay and working conditions than North Korea.

But seriously, laying off the brain trust behind your weapons and defence systems as well as the real rocket scientists seems like posting a sign saying “dear foreign governments, please find talent and knowledge available for low low prices.” Heck, half of the world powers will be looking to recruit just to know the limits and options their potential future frenemy has.

Pure genius. Not.

[collinsl]

Re: Dear Nuclear weapons experts and Rocket scientists

It's the opposite of operation paperclip - operation shredder perhaps?