[HN Gopher] NASA Force
___________________________________________________________________
NASA Force
Author : LorenDB
Score : 188 points
Date : 2026-04-17 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nasaforce.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (nasaforce.gov)
| tencentshill wrote:
| Cool website, Big Balls. Where's our social security data?
| Terr_ wrote:
| Just in case a reader has blissfully managed to not-remember
| last year: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/politics/doge-musk-
| edward-cor...
| ghostpepper wrote:
| How do they have budget for this but not for decent production
| values on the Artemis 2 livestream?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It looks like this come from the White House, not NASA's
| defunded communication budget
| givinguflac wrote:
| This is so weird and vague; I am not interested for fear of all
| of it being for space defense. Nope for me.
| dmazin wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| That said if this bothers you I highly recommend not looking up
| how many Space Shuttle missions are classified.
| kube-system wrote:
| Technology and defense technology have been inextricably linked
| since the wheel and fire were new technologies.
| whatshisface wrote:
| "We fired all of our employees. Now we're hiring temporary
| consultants."
| fhdkweig wrote:
| They used to be called scabs.
| drstewart wrote:
| Can you point me to the ongoing strike by NASA employees?
| EricRiese wrote:
| It's the same hiring process for regular government jobs with
| references to standard pay scales. So I don't think so.
| johnhess wrote:
| The first sentence isn't even a sentence.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Sure it is. You can fit a lot of technologists inside space
| flight and aeronautics systems if you push hard enough.
| happyopossum wrote:
| "fit" - you added a verb. That makes it a sentence.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I was thinking we verb the second word:
|
| NASA force technologists inside the systems that power
| American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific
| discovery.
| xpe wrote:
| These job postings opened today on April 17 and close in four
| days (on April 21). This is highly compressed and highly unusual.
|
| Being no fan of the current administration and its hangers-on, my
| brain quickly jumps to less flattering reasons for these short
| time windows. A four day application window favors people they
| want to select. They may well have told certain people in advance
| to be ready. I don't have direct "proof" of this, and I'm open to
| learning more, but the current administration has beyond
| exhausted any presumption of fair dealing.
|
| I encourage anyone and everyone interested to apply and report
| back. NASA has a good mission and its needs people with a moral
| backbone and intrinsic pro-science drive.
| sybercecurity wrote:
| That has been the assumption in most of these cases. The agency
| must already have a list of people they want, so a short window
| keeps the risk of someone else jumping to the front of the
| queue.
| secretsatan wrote:
| I'm sure it's based on merit
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I initially thought this was a call for technologists to commit
| to volunteering on a deep technical project for four days.
| That's not enough time to design a component. But it might
| _e.g._ let some minor work on a protocol advance.
| maciejzj wrote:
| Is this gig-workification of the space industry?
| cshimmin wrote:
| It kinda sounds like a post-doc, in that it provides an on-ramp
| to working in the industry/institution. But without having to
| waste your time getting a PhD.
| bilekas wrote:
| > But without having to waste your time getting a PhD
|
| Ah yes, that 'waste of times' having to learn things in
| aeronautics and physics..
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Betteridge's law of Hacker News comments.
| doener wrote:
| As long as Trump is still President every sane human being should
| stay away from any federal agency.
| xpe wrote:
| I understand the spirit of this comment (and I get it), but we
| want the opposite to be true. Let's find ways to support good
| people who step up.
|
| Edits (in case my meaning above is not clear):
|
| 1. When I write "but we want the opposite to be true" I mean
| this: if only Trump-aligned or Trump-tolerant people sign up
| for these roles, I do not think this is desirable for NASA.
|
| 2. When I write "I understand the spirit of this comment (and I
| get it)" I mean: from an individual point of view, I fully
| grant that many people would be better off seeking work
| elsewhere.
|
| 3. My experience and scientific research shows that people are
| not merely selfish actors. While individual incentives matter a
| lot, perhaps even predominantly, it isn't accurate to claim
| that we can fully explain human behavior with exclusively
| narrow individualist framings.
|
| 4. Many of us act selfishly much of the time, and this is
| indeed reasonable and even beneficial at times. But taken to an
| extreme it can be worse overall, even for those individuals.
| See: game theory, social connections, morality, and so on.
|
| 5. When I write "Let's find ways to support good people who
| step up" I do mean concrete things such as "let's crowdfund
| ethical people's legal fees" to survive the Trump
| administration.
| RIMR wrote:
| Given what we're facing, I am actually skeptical of people
| who step up to work for the government at this moment in
| time. There's a lot of nationalist language on this site.
| Even if your motivations are for science, do we really want
| to give any assistance to the goals of this administration?
| hellojesus wrote:
| I think it's a bit of, "Be the change you want to see". It
| may not be a bad thing to get tech folk with sense into
| these roles. They probably tend to have enough of a cushion
| to be able to refuse unethical work without worrying about
| the immediate consequences.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| NASA had a nationalist origin and has always kept those
| undertones even in the modern day, but I don't think
| anyone's ever accused it of being partisan. I don't believe
| many Americans associate NASA with any particular
| president, except maybe JFK, and I don't believe they'd
| conflate working for NASA with working for Trump.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| I think part of the point of OP was that this _isn 't_ a good
| way to support people to step up. It's frankly bizarre and
| has dubious future prospects like any other federal program
| under the current administration.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Good people need to make a living too!
| EricRiese wrote:
| The entirety of the government doesn't turn over every 4 years,
| especially at a technical org like NASA. You're still going to
| be working at NASA with a team of NASA people. Plus if they're
| hiring you know your team in particular won't be a target of
| layoffs.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| > The appropriated FY2026 budget has the largest discrepancy
| from the White House Request since 1987 at nearly 30%.[3] The
| request, submitted in May 2025, proposed a 24% cut to NASA's
| overall budget.[4] In January 2026, Congress passed the final
| budget, rejecting nearly all of the proposed cuts.
|
| From wikipedia. The white house is pushing for major cuts to
| Nasa
| wayeq wrote:
| ... so that the only people left doing those jobs are
| sycophants?
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| _Incompetent_ sycophants
| rafram wrote:
| Another barely usable website from the "National Design Studio."
| I wish they'd take a cue from gov.uk (or even the US Digital
| Service and 18F, which they gutted) and build clean, functional,
| and accessible sites... but the crew of web developers who are
| willing to work for this administration seem way too obsessed
| with this defense-tech startup landing page aesthetic to care
| about usability.
|
| The developer of this scroll-smoothing JS library [1] has a lot
| to answer for.
|
| [1]: https://www.lenis.dev/
| beej71 wrote:
| It misbehaves on Android FF, as well.
| rationalist wrote:
| It works on my Android FF.
| jmye wrote:
| Truly the "maximum lethality" of web design. And that's
| ignoring how terrible "NASA Force" is as a name. It's like it's
| all out of a bad 80s cartoon.
| scrumper wrote:
| Two things:
|
| - I like the rolling Moon animation very much.
|
| - This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during
| a budget squeeze, presumably with the hope that some of those
| they attract will still be around after this congress and the
| agency can stabilize once again. I guess it's also a neat kind of
| try-before-you-buy for both sides. NASA is prestigious and one of
| the very few places one could do purely science-focused aerospace
| engineering, but it's still a government job under all the gold
| leaf and atomic robots.
|
| EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA
| HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Isn't most of the actual aerospace R&D work contracted out?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| No
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| What kind of research happens outside academia-attached
| labs like JPL and outside MIC firms like lockheed/boeing?
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| There are a fair number of engineers at centers (Stennis,
| Ames, Kennedy, etc.) that are government employees. When
| I was NASA-adjacent, it seemed they wrote the specs and
| testing regimes. I think the government even did some of
| the testing with government-employed test engineers and
| technicians. But yeah, a lot of the manufacturing is done
| by contractors.
|
| There's a joke in the aero world that F-16s are designed
| by people Ph.D.'s, manufactured by people with Masters
| degrees, flown by people with a Batchelor's degree in
| History and maintained by people with a High School
| Diploma.
|
| It turns out you have to make jobs for people at all
| levels of education and experience.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Makes sense. What about on the basic research side? Is
| that done mostly through academia grants or are there in-
| house folks in the centers?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Each NASA center maintains in-house engineers and
| scientists, if for no other reason than to oversee and
| critique contracted work.
|
| But in reality they do significant amounts of directed
| research using "burden" funded research for their on
| internal needs, and grant work for NASA and other
| agencies (like DOE).
|
| I worked at JPL, and worked with folks at Ames for
| various reasons. Both centers try to carve out enough
| internal time to research new mission concepts, new ways
| of accomplishing existing mission concepts, or new basic
| technologies that have dual use for missions/commercial
| appliations. All of this would qualify as basic research
| similar to what would happen at Caltech or Stanford, the
| nearby official/unofficial partners.
|
| I attended all kinds of conferences and agency-level
| meetings with researchers from many other agencies / nasa
| centers as well, all mostly aimed at finding out how to
| better explore space (new missions), or improve our
| existing exploration capabilities, either with new or by
| adapting existing tech.
|
| NASA has an entire reporting pipeline called "New
| Technology Reports" that makes all of this research
| immediately public, and a deep tradition of spinning off
| commercial businesses to carry it forward if it turns out
| to be a good idea.
| sailfast wrote:
| They had these kinds of programs for a long time, but many of
| the engineers were vilified and the programs disbanded as soon
| as this administration took office. I'm not sure why someone
| would sign up to work for a government that has no respect for
| its employees (or a company for that matter) if they already
| have gainful employment.
|
| In fact, a bunch of NASA labs were recently closed where folks
| with this exact skillset could do these exact jobs. Why re-post
| under a different skin and expect a different result?
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Well... the TSA was a jobs program for people who couldn't or
| didn't want to get jobs as cops. Stennis (Space Flight
| Center) is a jobs program for Aero Engineering grads to keep
| them from going to work in Europe or India. Who knows... we
| might need them to design newer expensive missile systems
| sometime.
|
| There are all these 30-60 year old engineers who look like
| they should be good hires on paper, but the tech economy has
| been pooping out bullshit products (and jobs) for the last 20
| years. The last "real" job I had... my official role was to
| sit at a desk and "coordinate" development. While no one was
| looking, I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to
| check in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.) My
| job at Amazon was similar... the higher up the food chain you
| went, the less management understood what engineers did
| (modulo a few notable exceptions -- the guy who ran Route 53
| when it launched was amazingly tech saavy for a VP level
| manager.)
|
| There's only so much idiocy you can expect the tech industry
| to digest. It's time to send engineers to the government so
| they can write documents about how we should evaluate the
| requirements for evaluation criteria.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > I wrote code and passed it off to a dev in India to check
| in (US engineers weren't allowed to check in code.)
|
| ...usually it's the other way around.
|
| May I ask what the situation was? Reverse-outsourcing by
| the Indian central government?
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Not OP. Sounds like he was considered to be a manager and
| wasn't allowed to get into the weeds. So instead of just
| managing the off shore team, he wrote some of the code
| for them and then let them take credit for it.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > many of the engineers were vilified and the programs
| disbanded as soon as this administration took office
|
| they may have trimmed some fat, which is normal and
| necessary, but it's disingenuous to say that "engineers were
| vilified"
| dboreham wrote:
| The entire DOGE program was an exercise in vilifiaction.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> they may have trimmed some fat, which is normal and
| necessary, but it 's disingenuous to say that "engineers
| were vilified"_
|
| You can always tell when someone is embarrassed to defend
| something (especially hurting people), when they have to
| mask it in ambiguous, impassive terms and stale euphemisms.
|
| He didn't _fire thousands of good people, human beings who
| have to worry about putting food on the table now, for
| purely ideological reasons, while vilifying them as "woke",
| unqualified, doing work not worth doing (only to open the
| same positions back up now, because it turns out it was)_.
| No, he just _" trimmed the fat"_.
|
| Oh, did people get hurt? Did we waste money and lose
| expertise for nothing? I thought we just "trimmed the fat".
| Gotta "trim the fat", right? "Trimming the fat" is normal
| and necessary, and if I say something is "trimming the
| fat", it must be. Thus, anything I say is normal and
| necessary, must be.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Thanks for your positive framing and pushback against (possibly
| knee-jerk) cynicism.
|
| Unrelated tangent: saw HackerSmacker in your profile, plan to
| try it out, wish it supported iOS.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| >> budget squeeze
|
| >> will still be around after this congress and the agency can
| stabilize once again
|
| 2026 budget - 24.4 billion
|
| 2025 budget - 24.8 billion
|
| 2024 budget - 25.3 billion
|
| 2023 budget - 25.3 billion
|
| 2022 budget - 24.0 billion
|
| 2021 budget - 23.2 billion
|
| 2020 budget - 22.6 billion
|
| 2019 budget - 21.5 billion
|
| 2018 budget - 20.7 billion
|
| 2017 budget - 19.6 billion
|
| 2016 budget - 19.2 billion
|
| What part of these numbers are you interpreting as some sort of
| insane budget restriction?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| You're kinda implying that there's a few people standing
| around in a shed, and that really don't cost too much.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 24.4 in 2026 is less than 19.2 in 2016. I wouldn't call it a
| giant squeeze or anything though, but these raw numbers
| almost imply the opposite kind of misunderstanding.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The admin has tried two times in a row to cut the total
| budget by 20%, and the science budget by 50%
|
| So, probably that squeeze?
| nine_k wrote:
| Are these numbers adjusted for inflation? $19.2B in 20216
| dollars would be $26.4B in 2026 dollars.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| 2027 White House proposed budget[1]: $18.8 billion
|
| 2026 White House proposed budget[2]: $18.8 billion
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2026/04/budget...
|
| [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...
|
| [2] is represented as deltas, explainer here
| https://spacenews.com/white-house-budget-proposal-would-
| phas...
| casefields wrote:
| Congress passes the budget since they have the power of the
| purse. Presidents have requested all sorts of nonsense to
| appease the base.
| krapp wrote:
| >EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at
| NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.
|
| Why bother? Americans clearly don't believe in science anymore,
| and the American government can't be trusted to fund it
| properly, or to not rewrite or defund research because of
| wrongthink or "DEI."
|
| If I were working for NASA, or even a possible candidate for
| working for NASA, I'd get my passport in order and look for
| greener pastures. Sure, the pay may not be the best but at
| least you aren't working for Nazis and pedophiles who believe
| in space demons and miasma theory.
|
| (oops I did a cynicism.)
| beej71 wrote:
| Wonder what the job security is like.
| daviding wrote:
| My 5090 couldn't handle that starfield at the beginning. I got a
| 1202 alarm just scrolling down..
| Bender wrote:
| Odd. My laptop seemed to do fine with a 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX
| 1650 Ti Mobile [Discrete]' using CachyOS. It could have been a
| little smoother but it rendered fine. There were a couple spots
| where it was a little herky-jerky-laggy that maybe needs
| optimization.
| sirtimbly wrote:
| ohhh... right, clearly, they only expected Mac users to open
| the web page or to apply.
| airza wrote:
| it chokes on my mac also
| tristor wrote:
| It choked on my M5 Max MBP w/ 128GB of Unified Memory
| connected via a TB5 dock over 10GbE directly to my router,
| which is backed by 5Gbit symmetric fiber. My measured average
| latency to nasaforce.gov was under 13ms.
|
| So, yeah.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| It's an OS thing. My Pixel 9 handled it just fine.
|
| Windows by any chance?
| signorovitch wrote:
| Ran smooth on both my iPhone and my 13-year-old thinkpad x230.
| Computer0 wrote:
| what OS is on the thinkpad?
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Probably WebGL is using integrated iGPU for whatever reason.
| Happened to me on Windows+Brave.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Strange, it works here in Firefox on Linux using the internal
| GPU (I don't use primusrun for the browser). Normally I'm the
| first to notice a particularly heavy website or bad FPS in even
| pretty old games! Wonder how they managed to make it sluggish
| on a very expensive GPU but get my crappy setup to run it
| nicely
| pugworthy wrote:
| My run of the mill notebook computer is showing the Jennifer
| Lawrence meme clip to you right now, and still performant.
| joshuat wrote:
| My MBP M5 couldn't handle it with Firefox but it was fine on
| Safari, betting it's a WebGL issue or something
| xpe wrote:
| > More opportunities will be posted here in the coming months.
| Click here to sign up for updates to stay informed when new roles
| open.
|
| Which links to: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/sKWkWfp
|
| Would anyone like to do some _citizen journalism_ and see if the
| Constant Contact data handling is done above-board. I 've done
| some Claude research -- enough to make me suspicious -- but I Am
| Not A Lawyer.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Did anyone scroll down far enough to see the "automate air
| traffic controllers"? I guess technically it's aeronautics but I
| didn't know that was part of NASA
| yieldcrv wrote:
| its an air administration
|
| the space part gets the most attention
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| I saw that, I was a pilot for many years, and this would
| actually be kind of cool technology if it could be done right.
| I'm half tempted to apply.
|
| One of my customers right now is frustrated because they have
| the tower closed at weird hours at their principle base of
| operations and they can't depart flights conveniently because
| of staffing shortages. Clearances are a bitch too... the whole
| thing is kind of wild and it's kind of a safety hazard when
| this airport goes uncontrolled. Anything that would help out -
| even cameras that would let the tower controllers at the
| primary airport see WTF is happening at the satellite field
| would be helpful...
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Yes, our stretched thin controllers watching the feed from a
| satellite field makes total sense.
|
| Maybe they could try a pilot program somewhere like LGA?
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| Situational awareness is situational awareness. We still do
| in AK, but we used to have good Flight Service Stations
| that could provide advisory workload permitting.
|
| AI tooling to provide traffic advisories when there are
| critical staffing shortages would be a godsend in some
| parts, and they don't necessarily need to even remotely be
| close to provide some help.
|
| Obviously, that's not going to work at Teterhole or LGA,
| but the air traffic system is more than just the east
| coast. There's tons of staffing shortages across the whole
| country.
|
| My first thought is, "we should hire more controllers and
| pay them better" - but if we're not going to do that or if
| we can't recruit and train fast enough (we can't really),
| some automation would be good.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| NASA has always had significant role in forward looking
| research in the area of civilian aviation (which it assumed
| from the agency it replaced, the National Advisory Committee
| for Aeronautics.)
| tialaramex wrote:
| One of the most important things NASA does, ignoring for a
| moment the unknowable value of say, discovering that Mars once
| had microbial life, is ASRS https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/
|
| You know how (scheduled, ie you buy tickets to SF, no prior
| relation to the crew, money for a service) aviation is
| incredibly safe? Well, one way you can continue increasing
| safety when you've already fixed all the things which keep
| going wrong enough that they happened and you corrected for
| them, is collect incidents where things _didn 't_ go wrong.
|
| But obviously no pilot is going to just say "I nearly killed
| everybody" in public 'cos that's career ending, so ASRS
| collects these reports anonymously and in fact promises you
| immunity for certain things _if_ you reported them first. So
| they can see e.g. sure nobody ever died on a plane because a
| pilot pushed the "kill everybody" button on the new Boeing
| cost-optimised "It's probably fine" B123-Extra _but_ here are
| six reports from pilots who pushed "kill everybody" but were
| able to push "Whoops, no don't do that" in the six seconds left
| to prevent it. So this means no the FAA should not approve
| Boeing's request to remove the "unnecessary" Whoops button from
| future models and actually maybe the FAA OK for the "kill
| everybody" button should be revisited 'cos it doesn't say
| anything about pilots pressing it easily by accident in
| Boeing's request...
| mikeocool wrote:
| Irrelevant side note:
|
| If you looked at https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ and thought, wow
| this webpage must 25 years old, you would be incorrect! In
| 2000, they had a very 1990s website with the option for a
| flash version and non-flash version: https://web.archive.org/
| web/20000407212204/http://asrs.arc.n...
|
| The early versions of this design arrived in 2008, though it
| has a sweet sweet flash header complete with audio until
| 2021.
|
| An even more irrelevant side note: it appears that
| archive.org has a javascript based flash emulator built in to
| run old flash websites, which is pretty amazing.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Why is this called Nasa Force when the linked job is for an
| Areospace Engineer? The usa.jobs site only shows 15 open reqs for
| Nasa, and they are almost all engineering roles, save a few
| accounting/finance ones.
|
| Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for
| tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page
| (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data
| Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet
| certified engineering degrees?
|
| I'd love to work for Nasa, but I live in Portland, OR. Does this
| geo basically disqualify me from ever joining Nasa?
|
| And the pay range for the aerospace engineer is okayish, but it's
| not really out-competiting more senior tech folks in any
| capacity.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Yeah, there definitely needs to be more transparency about the
| whole initiative.
|
| Either it's "We're hiring ~1000 IT/Engineering specialists
| across multiple domains" or it's "Hey, just apply on USAJobs
| for the open positions".
|
| Otherwise it just feels like throwing an application into the
| black hole of some kafkaesque talent management system.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You'll have better luck visiting the various center's
| websites.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I'd love to work for Nasa, but I live in Portland, OR. Does
| this geo basically disqualify me from ever joining Nasa
|
| Yes. And it always did since the 1950s unless you were
| interested in relocating.
|
| Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that too
| in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.
|
| > Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for
| tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page
| (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data
| Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have
| Abet certified engineering degrees
|
| Not all industries need SWEs who are CRUD monkeys. And your
| assumption deeply underestimates how most Aerospace and
| Mechanical Engineers know how to develop at a CS level now as
| well - most MechE and Aerospace undergrad programs now see
| their students double major or minor in CompE or CS.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Thanks. I was dual questioning people that likely knew the
| answer and lamenting my life's decisions.
|
| I have no doubt that modern engineering students have CS
| know-how. It's almost a requirement for the modern world. But
| I was curious if there were roles for things like simulation,
| embedded software, etc. or even general scientists that may
| not fall under traditional engineering. This was mainly
| conditional on the website's approach to vaguity.
| jmalicki wrote:
| Simulation is largely what traditional engineers do - I
| mean how many classes have you taken on finite element
| methods, discretizing PDEs, etc.? It's not web dev.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Fair. I think this is about the extent of my training,
| which was as an Applied Mathematics and Econ undergrad
| about 15 years ago: Partial differential equations : an
| introduction / Walter A. Strauss >
| https://libcat.canterbury.ac.nz/Record/1093497/TOC
|
| Maybe my idea of NASA was too encompassing. I figured
| that, apart from the engineering work, general sim would
| require optimizations and productionalization similar to
| how we have AI Engineers focused on the practical
| implementation of ML systems apart from the core model
| R&D.
|
| I got a bit hooked on Econ for awhile which held my
| attention through an MS, which is when I learned about
| computers and then applied that into DS and development.
|
| Most of my simulation experience is in stochastic systems
| and modern digital twins where agents sometimes have
| asymmetric information. I can see how I'm of no practical
| use to NASA now, but it still stings. What a bummer
| existing and not doing anything cool with life. A warning
| to youth!
| alephnerd wrote:
| I think you are underestimating your ability to
| contribute and also putting NASA on too much of a
| pedestal.
|
| I'd argue your background is extremely valuable, but not
| easily traversible to NASA at the moment.
|
| If you are deeply interested in the space, working with
| the newer startups in geospatial/hyperspectral imaging
| (be it climate or defense usecases) or CV space.
|
| In a lot of cases, NASA is basically just acting as a
| coordinator between multiple vendors who are doing "the
| cool stuff" with less bureaucratic minutiae and stress
| from what's going on in DC.
|
| Lots of interesting players in the ClimateTech and
| DefenseTech space who would like your background, and
| indirectly or directly they all work with NASA anyhow.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Thanks. I did find a space jobs site last week, and some
| jobs looked like they aligned closely. That's probably
| why I was surprised the nasa reqs weren't as broad.
|
| I wasn't really looking for a change; I have 1 and 3 year
| olds and am fully remote, and the flexibility with
| sicknesses is really a benefit. I think it was mostly a
| shock to my system that I may never do anything "cool"
| with my life.
| jmalicki wrote:
| One way of viewing this is that to a moderate degree,
| NASA has largely been outsourced to SpaceX.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Were you in an Econ program that required tons of Matlab,
| SAS, R?
| hellojesus wrote:
| Not in undergrad (a single upper division class), but yes
| in grad school. I did a lot of applied mathematics in
| undergrad and only took the min required upper division
| probability/stats class. I didn't find it interesting at
| the time. But when I got to Econ grad school there was a
| massive focus on econometrics, and I learned it from
| first principals.
|
| For languages: SAS in undergrad econ/Matlab for math
| classes, STATA primarily in grad school, and I pivoted to
| R and then python when I hit industry.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > simulation
|
| That's largely a Mechanical Engineering, Applied Math, and
| Applied Physics subfield now, not computer science. Most CS
| majors don't even know what an IVP is, let alone PDEs,
| nonlinear simulation, etc.
|
| Most CS programs no longer require numerical methods and
| analysis classes which are critical for this as well as
| other adjacent subfields like AI/ML theory.
|
| > embedded software
|
| That's a computer engineering and MechE subfield now. Most
| CS programs don't require OS classes anymore let alone
| embedded programming.
|
| > even general scientists that may not fall under
| traditional engineering
|
| The job posting on USAJobs is clear. And most people who
| are serious about working in the space also know _how_
| federal hiring works.
| sublinear wrote:
| Aerospace isn't a sacred discipline either, and education in
| CS has very little to do with writing practical software or
| conducting business.
|
| I think you're about to find out in the next few years how
| much work it takes to develop a moon base and that dismissing
| those people as "monkeys" is absurd.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that
| too in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.
|
| Aerospace can be done remotely. I was working remotely as an
| aerospace engineer before the pandemic.
|
| Portland has a 1 million sq ft Boeing factory and dozens of
| other aerospace companies.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > Highly skilled early- to mid- career engineers,
| technologists, and innovators join NASA for focused term
| appointments, typically 1-2 years with the possibility of
| extension, to solve complex...
|
| is somewhere in that word salad. I think it's an internship?
| dublinstats wrote:
| Maybe a visiting scholar kind of thing.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I guess what they want is a short term resource which would
| typically be a contractor or consultant but maybe they have
| to hire an FTE. So they're saying it's going to get real
| boring after year 2 so we expect you to leave. Sounds like a
| good deal for a new grad, bottom bullet on the resume would
| be a year or two at NASA.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| 15 open roles for nasa is disturbing. I'm sure every post has
| 3000 applicants.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Open roles != open positions. NASA probably has use for more
| than one aerospace engineer.
| unfunco wrote:
| I think it's called NASA Force to screw with the search results
| for Space Force, similar to Boris Johnson saying his hobby was
| building toy buses, in order to try and reduce the relevancy of
| the Brexit bus.
| cheschire wrote:
| Why would the president that created space force want to
| screw with it? Was there some recent bad blood or something
| else I missed?
| jjk166 wrote:
| I doubt the president of the united states is personally
| reviewing the wording of low level job postings.
| cheschire wrote:
| GP was discussing the overall name "nasa force", not the
| wording of the job postings
| jjk166 wrote:
| The name of the job posting is part of the wording of the
| job posting, and very likely not reviewed by the
| president.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I'd love to work for NASA
|
| i doubt it's that great, NASA is a huge government
| organization. There may be a handful of people/teams doing cool
| things but I suspect much of it is infuriating slow and
| bureaucratic. However, it's probably a good place to retire
| from if you're willing to put in the 30-40 years.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I have a buddy at JPL who loves it. It's a reasonably fast
| paced atmosphere where you can have a lot of responsibility
| relatively early in your career. Unfortunately everything is
| mission centric so there's pretty much always a Sword of
| Damocles hanging over you if the mission gets axed due to
| budget cuts. Good place to work on cool stuff, bad place for
| job security.
| pcj-github wrote:
| This is so cringe. Who are the people behind this god awful
| "national design studio", and how are they related to MAGA /
| Trump? Assuredly yet another insider cronyism deal that degrades
| trust in the US government.
|
| Claude:
|
| The National Design Studio (NDS) is a new White House agency that
| Trump created by executive order on August 21, 2025, as part of
| an initiative called "America by Design." It lives inside the
| White House Office of the Executive Office of the President.
|
| The setup
|
| The executive order established the NDS along with a new
| position: Chief Design Officer of the United States
|
| Trump appointed Joe Gebbia (Airbnb co-founder) as the first Chief
| Design Officer
|
| Gebbia previously worked at DOGE (Department of Government
| Efficiency) alongside Elon Musk on modernizing federal retirement
| paperwork
|
| The stated goal: overhaul roughly 26,000 federal websites and
| physical government interfaces to be "both usable and beautiful"
| -- Gebbia has compared the target experience to "the Apple Store"
|
| Initial results are required by July 4, 2026 (the US 250th
| anniversary), and the temporary organization within NDS is
| scheduled to sunset after three years
| righthand wrote:
| It's the brain dead rebranding of what Trump thought USDS was
| doing.
| bilekas wrote:
| This really screams and reads like a crypto scam or something,
| also why would they not use the official NASA logo ?
|
| This is so strange.. I'm still not even clear on what it's for..
| metalliqaz wrote:
| It reads like it received no proof-reading or editing, and it
| looks like it was vibe coded.
|
| Intern project?
| kami23 wrote:
| I would love to work for NASA so much even at a significant pay
| cut, but almost everything I've read in the past was they still
| do drug screenings for a lot of positions I was interested in.
| Maybe someday they will pull their heads out of the dark ages.
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| Normally I would agree but I get it with regards to NASA. They
| do life and death stuff that has like zero margin of error.
| They probably shouldn't be in the business of hiring people
| who's edible might be lasting longer than they expected.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Frankly, drug screenings for employees can only benefit NASA
| given the kind of work they do.
| moomin wrote:
| As if the job of NASA wasn't to get some select people as
| high as possible.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Who needs MDMA when you got UDMH?
| tiberone wrote:
| > NASA Force technologists inside the systems that power American
| spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery.
|
| Am I an idiot or does their leading sentence make absolutely no
| sense?
| RIMR wrote:
| I mean, I can make sense of it, but it's written like it's
| describing a picture or something. As a standalone sentence, it
| is weird.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| I can't. It is a subject without a predicate. It doesn't look
| like valid English to my eyes.
| boogieknite wrote:
| or a headline about coercion. even that would be "forces"
| kokanee wrote:
| This website is vibe coded
| input_sh wrote:
| ...and equally substanceless as anything coming out of
| National Design Studio.
|
| Here's an almost identical one (design-wise):
| https://genesis.energy.gov/
|
| And another one: https://techforce.gov/
|
| And another one: https://safedc.gov/
|
| All basically the same one-pager with different vibe-coded
| graphics and like 500 words of text.
| adonovan wrote:
| This administration does love "force".
| nipponese wrote:
| I am trying to understand, are you saying marketing always
| needs to be hand-rolled?
| finghin wrote:
| Seemed to work okay back in the day.
| MintyPyro wrote:
| Great, we should never change anything ever again then
| arikrahman wrote:
| Nothing ever happens
| lynndotpy wrote:
| When the change makes something worse all around, then
| that change should not be favored.
| nipponese wrote:
| it didn't make the amount of tax payer money spent on the
| webpage worse.
| pona-a wrote:
| If you want to me to care about what you have to say, I'd
| prefer if you cared enough to write it yourself. Especially
| on on taxpayer money. If I can spot it as slop, you have a
| problem.
| gegtik wrote:
| whats next? luddites demanding that book contents be hand-
| rolled by meatbags?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It is a definition; the transition between the logotype and
| normal text has an implicit [:}, NASAFORCE: technologists
| inside the systems that power American spaceflight,
| aeronautics, and scientific discovery.
|
| Though its an odd choice that they run it in with the paragraph
| of normal text rather than making that a heading. Of course,
| with a four day hiring window its a website that exists as pro
| forma evidence that there was a public website about the hiring
| effort, the people actually intended to be hired were almost
| certainly notified in advance out of band, so there probably
| wasn't a whole lot of effort put into this.
| ambicapter wrote:
| You skipped a word.
|
| "NASA Force: Technologists inside the systems that power
| American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery".
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| NASA _force_ technologists inside the systems that power
| American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific
| discovery?
| sph wrote:
| "Force" is the verb.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| It is not a sentence unless "to technologist" is a verb.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I don't think it actually a sentence.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| There's a missing 'are' before 'inside'.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Yikes, they are pushing their low-level employees into the
| rocket nozzles and fuel tanks? There's no room inside an RTG to
| fit an intern... Hopefully it means welders, metrologists,
| inspectors, etc.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| you can tell this was generated with Gemini, the way it loves to
| do those "enter on scroll" sentences
| lucb1e wrote:
| Do you mean the "highlight more words as you scroll down the
| text" effect?
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| Isn't the Office of Personnel Management still under the control
| of DOGE? I'm wondering if this is an actual internship program or
| a way to sneak Elon Musk's SpaceX buddies into NASA.
| big_toast wrote:
| Why does the application window last four days?
|
| Charitably they're moving fast, but without already having people
| in mind for the roles or having created the hiring pipeline, how
| do you reach a sufficiently large audience. Is there an
| explanation I'm missing? Was this announced a while ago?
|
| Makes it feel like they already know who they want for the
| roles/preferential selection. On a longer or recurring timescale,
| seems like a cool way to reach out to potential hires.
| soraki_soladead wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong but then why do a big website and
| branding push. If they had someone in mind they'd bury it on a
| regular job posting.
|
| They specify early to mid career. Imo they're anticipating a
| ton of applications and bounding it makes reviewing them
| tractable.
| big_toast wrote:
| Ya, I don't understand the calculus. If it's important enough
| for a big website, why not promote the site for a week first.
| Too many applications seems more desirable than missing the
| right people who are 'heads down building' or just not
| terminally online.
|
| That on top of Direct Hire Authority.
|
| I can see NASA Force[1] is part of the US Tech Force[2] push
| and has been talked about for the last several months.
|
| [1]:https://www.meritalk.com/articles/nasa-opm-kick-off-
| drive-fo...
|
| [2]:https://meritalk.com/articles/opm-launches-us-tech-force-
| to-...
| browningstreet wrote:
| I think the hint of violence was deliberate.
| digitalShield wrote:
| I loved that rolling moon
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| So is this collecting signups for new GS-12s? Or is this program
| able to offer more competitive compensation?
| stickman393 wrote:
| NASA should have co-opted "Space Force" from the get-go; funding
| might not have been such an issue
| sph wrote:
| It's already a thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > ...for a few days, access is granted to this work. The number
| is extremely limited. The window only lasts four days. Will you
| answer the call?...
|
| What? This sounds like a phishing email from before phishing
| emails got good.
| boywitharupee wrote:
| the timer and urgency of this reminds me of the movie Armageddon
| where they had limited time to form a crew for a space mission.
| ISL wrote:
| Spaceflight requires relentless deliberate progress.
|
| An exploding job-recruitment offer might not attract the kind of
| folks we want designing a system that absolutely _must_ work
| after a decade in space.
|
| I've worked with NASA and ESA employees/contractors who've made
| technical miracles happen in space. I don't think any of them
| would be drawn to this style of recruitment.
| sublinear wrote:
| I got the impression that despite using terms like "mission
| critical", this isn't about the hardcore technical wizardry
| behind propulsion and safety.
|
| This is a call for developers of the very long tail of
| logistics related stuff. I'd imagine a moon base would need
| someone to write the software for schedulers, dashboards, etc.
| and engineer the parts that interface with and provide non-
| critical telemetry to those systems. I'm not saying that stuff
| isn't hard, but it's not anything life or death.
|
| Some of those roles might not even be technical at all and be
| more about coordinating the human side of those efforts.
| sailfast wrote:
| "Build a website - it's almost like you got the job done already"
| - Someone in the White House OEOB
|
| The new National Design Studio that replaced the USDS does not
| seem to be capable of building a website that is accessible,
| performant, and not overly bombastic / hyperbolic.
|
| Completely unreadable. Animation fails at the top, on a decently
| provisioned Mac laptop with 16GB of RAM.
|
| Either way - it's unfortunate that the Technology Fellows, GSA,
| and other programs that brought folks into industry for roles
| exactly like this were unceremoniously destroyed in quite cruel
| and silly ways. Why would I apply for this? Fool me once...
| rozab wrote:
| The copy also doesn't seem to be written by someone with a good
| command of English, even ChatGPT would do better
|
| >technologists inside the systems that power American
| spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery. You work on
| real missions, alongside the teams building them, and your
| contributions move from concept to operation. For a few days,
| access is granted to this work. The number is extremely
| limited. The window only lasts four days. Will you answer the
| call?
| nine_k wrote:
| I don't see any big trouble with the quoted text. The
| language is a bit nerdy, and a bit bureaucratic, but that's
| exactly what I'd expect from NASA.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Guys, I figured it out. This isn't just a 4-day window for an
| Aerospace Engineer position, that's just the beta test. They're
| preparing for calling up a wave of volunteer civilians who want
| to spend a few months on Mars (and maybe even come back).
| krunck wrote:
| Such urgency. They're definitely racing China to the moon.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Is this just USAJOBS way of getting more resumes so they can give
| them to xAI or OpenAI as a training set?
| mg794613 wrote:
| Let me get back to you if I find someone who wants to relocate to
| the USA.
| paultopia wrote:
| Based on the name I'd thought it was going to be another
| militarization project, thank god it isn't.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I had the same thought.
|
| But can we really rule out it being part of such a strategy?
| tonymet wrote:
| I envisioned a tactical unit like For All Mankind. I can't
| imagine that China would allow the US to colonize the moon. It's
| effectively an infinite nuke factory. Any Heinlein fan would
| recognize that.
| EricRiese wrote:
| Experience necessary. From Assessment 1, which you only get to
| after spending $16 ordering your college transcript...
|
| > I have 1 year of directly related specialized experience
| equivalent to at least the GS-13 level in the Federal service
| that included: Performing program/project management of space,
| aeronautical flight systems or experimental aircraft/aircraft
| systems that involve planning, researching, designing,
| developing, testing and evaluating, or completing cost analyses;
| Analyzing, designing, or operating space flight systems,
| aeronautical flight systems, experimental aircraft/aircraft
| systems, or structures operating throughout the earth's
| atmosphere; Developing requirements and integrating aerospace or
| flight/ground systems (e.g., payloads, hardware/software,
| scientific instruments, communication equipment, cargo, or any
| other specialized equipment).
| EricRiese wrote:
| I answered honestly that I didn't and it didn't block my
| submission.
|
| I have the specific Computer Science/Engineering degree they
| spell out in length in one question (30 credit hours CS, 16
| credit hours math/calculus/stats) so I feel like that gives me
| a chance on top of the narrow window.
|
| Glad I skipped ahead on the optional essay section. YOLO.
| spelunker wrote:
| They want my college transcript? From the early 00's? I would
| like to think I've grown a bit professionally since then.
| erdaniels wrote:
| Yet another US Job application where you need to answer "How
| would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and
| policy priorities in this role?". Instant pass.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Wait, really? I'm not doubting you, I just didn't go far enough
| into the application process to validate one way or the other.
| tills13 wrote:
| So are they defunding NASA or not?
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| I'm just gonna leave this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEC-
| Marconi_scientist_deaths_c...
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| NASA "Force?" It sounds very similar to Space Force and Air Force
| and adds a militaristic tone to NASA. Maybe that is the intent. I
| know that NASA and the military are closely linked but the
| general brand of NASA is a the science-focused civilian side
| while something like Space Force would be the military side.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| It is a word with multiple meanings. One such meaning is "a
| group of people brought together and organized for a particular
| activity."
| cdrnsf wrote:
| 10.5MB page weight for a landing page? This national design
| studio is...not great.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Try making a webpage using an LLM when you don't explicitly
| tell it to optimize for page weight. Not that developers get to
| spend much time optimizing, but they can actually think and
| make reasonable choices of how to build it and will notice if
| it's noticeably slower in e.g. the integration environment
| compared to localhost (even if I'm sure they have good machines
| and connections compared to 90% of users, at >10MB you start to
| notice, whereas token predictors do not have a concept of time
| while fetching the page in a test run)
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| I would personally give anything to work with, next to,
| alongside, or near Chelsea Gohd, aka Foxanne, the foxiest ever
| NASA spokeswoman and outreach narrator
|
| https://youtu.be/gNwkawLGDkg?si=tY6FCMtTsOQNRfHG
| _joel wrote:
| Not a thirsty rocket
| blendo wrote:
| Searching for more DOGE-boy wrecking balls?
| chimerasaurus wrote:
| > You will join a collaborative, mission-driven team where ideas
| are valued, contributions are recognized, and innovation is part
| of everyday work.
|
| Wow, gee wiz. I can't wait to synergize in real time for action
| oriented solutions.
|
| /s
|
| This website feels like an HR person asked Claude to make a
| website. If you're swayed by a simple website, you're not high
| caliber talent.
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