NASA Is Back To Work, But the Effects of the Government Shutdown Linger (theverge.com) 115
Following a record 35-day government shutdown, thousands of civil servants and contractors are heading back to work this week at NASA's various centers throughout the country. "These first few days back on the job will be consumed with practical matters, such as figuring out employee backpay and how to dive back into projects," reports The Verge. "The shutdown will undoubtedly result in delays for some of NASA's long-term programs, too, but it'll be a while before the space agency can fully assess the extent of the damage." From the report: To explain how NASA is adjusting in the wake of the shutdown, the space agency's administrator Jim Bridenstine addressed employees during a town hall meeting this afternoon at NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC. "Welcome to 2019," he said during the meeting, which was live-streamed on NASATV. "NASA is now open and we're very thankful for that." The comment was met by applause from those in attendance, while Bridenstine went on to acknowledge that it's been a rough start to the year for the agency. "I want to say thank you for your patience and for your commitment to this agency and to the mission we all believe in so dearly."
Bridenstine told the room that some NASA employees did leave during the shutdown, though it wasn't a substantial amount. "We didn't have a mass exodus," he said. "I think had this gone on longer, we would have. But we did lose people -- onesies and twosies -- across the agency and even here at headquarters. That is absolutely true." Perhaps those hit hardest at NASA were the agency's contractors. [...] Each company funded by NASA has its own contract with the agency, and the provisions of those agreements differ from contract to contract. Some contractors were paid their funding in advance of the shutdown, allowing them to continue working mostly unfazed. However, the employees of contractors who did not receive funding in advance were unable to bill for the hours that they worked during the shutdown. And it's possible they'll never receive compensation for that time. "NASA is in the middle of selecting new planetary missions to pursue, as part of its New Frontiers and Discovery programs -- and the shutdown may have delayed that process, says Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser at The Planetary Society," reports The Verge. "Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, pushed back the date for when the agency would accept applications for new science research proposals. And there's uncertainty surrounding the new giant rocket NASA is working on to take astronauts to the Moon and beyond, called the Space Launch System." Boeing told Politico that the shutdown delayed testing of the rocket's hardware.
Bridenstine told the room that some NASA employees did leave during the shutdown, though it wasn't a substantial amount. "We didn't have a mass exodus," he said. "I think had this gone on longer, we would have. But we did lose people -- onesies and twosies -- across the agency and even here at headquarters. That is absolutely true." Perhaps those hit hardest at NASA were the agency's contractors. [...] Each company funded by NASA has its own contract with the agency, and the provisions of those agreements differ from contract to contract. Some contractors were paid their funding in advance of the shutdown, allowing them to continue working mostly unfazed. However, the employees of contractors who did not receive funding in advance were unable to bill for the hours that they worked during the shutdown. And it's possible they'll never receive compensation for that time. "NASA is in the middle of selecting new planetary missions to pursue, as part of its New Frontiers and Discovery programs -- and the shutdown may have delayed that process, says Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser at The Planetary Society," reports The Verge. "Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, pushed back the date for when the agency would accept applications for new science research proposals. And there's uncertainty surrounding the new giant rocket NASA is working on to take astronauts to the Moon and beyond, called the Space Launch System." Boeing told Politico that the shutdown delayed testing of the rocket's hardware.
Re: Why quit? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Why quit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Look at Sryia, the Prime Minister of Turkey gets Trump on the phone and convinces Trump to promptly pull out of Syria without any consultation with his military causing his Secretary of Defence to resign!
Then someone finally clues Trump into the fact that the Turkish Prime Minister just wanted the US out so they could take out the Kurds (the US allies in the conflict), which Trump should have known if he spent 2 minutes reading up on the conflict. So then Trump is frantically backtracking and trying to put conditions on his withdraw.
And then the shutdown, he meets with Democratic leaders, "proudly owns the shutdown", gets talked out of it by his advisors who know it's an awful idea, gets talked back into it by right wing pundits riling up their audience, and then shuts down the government with no leverage and no chance of success. His only possible "out" a declaration of emergency. A plan that was just a transparent ploy by his staffers to get him to sign a spending bill and then yell at the courts for blocking him instead.
But this goes on for a month and he says We will not cave! [twitter.com].
And then a day later he caves.
And this is just over the past month and a half with a Christmas break thrown in!
He's just stumbling into self-inflicted disaster after self-inflicted disaster.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, with news being what they are these days, I don't dare have an opinion on US politics at all.
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I used to enjoy political caricatures. But since they more and more resemble reality, it's become kinda hard to enjoy them.
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Frankly, with news being what they are these days, I don't dare have an opinion on US politics at all.
I think that the most important part to understand about US politics is that it's an extremely adversarial, first-past-the-post system. Here in Europe and many other places we're more used to proportional representation, coalitions and compromise. What it means is that Trump won the coin flip with Hillary for the presidency, the coin flip with Ted Cruz for the Republican candidacy and it's more or less coin flips all the way down. Basically you have to start off with a dedicated fan base/special interest gr
Re: Why quit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.
In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example), you will have 45% of voters who will always vote party A and 45% of the people who will always vote party B. The remaining 10% who are willing to change their votes are the ones who make the decisions for everyone.
Because of this I'm not worried about trumps popularity, its the 10% who make the decisions and given the midterms, they've voted against him (G.W. bush didn't lose the house until the middle of his second term in comparison).
However there are a large percentage of the 45% who will always vote R who are deliberately cutting themselves of from any information that could contradict what they believe. They cocoon themselves with Fox News and believe anything contrary is a conspiracy. To these people it doesn't matter how bad he is, as long as the other side doesn't win. These delusionals aren't powerful though. They'll talk about revolution, but will give up as soon as they run out of hot pockets.
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Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.
In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example),
The UK, Australia, and Canada, are not 2 party democracies -- they are multi-party, they usually have 4 or more political parties.
For example, the UK Parliament has 9 parties:
Conservative Party
Co-operative Party
Democratic Unionist Party
Green Party
Labour Party
Liberal Democrats
Plaid Cymru
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The wars in that area of the world will never be finished. They've been fighting there since before the Romans and Persians and they will be fighting there when we're all dead and buried.
If we stay we will never be finished. For the love of Pete we still have bases in places that we finished fighting 70 years ago.
No. If Trump pulls us completely out of the Middle East I'd dance for joy. I'd be glad to see our Navy cut to a hundred ships, mostly littoral,and the other services cut commensurately. Let other
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Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is. Look at Sryia, the Prime Minister of Turkey gets Trump on the phone and convinces Trump to promptly pull out of Syria without any consultation with his military causing his Secretary of Defence to resign!
Because he seems to understand the bigger picture that the US military does not need to be involved in endless policing operations around the world. And maybe Trump made major mistakes in the how the draw down was announced in this case, but it is hard to tell given that a big part of the media tries to report everything he does in a negative light. In the end the policy seems the right one to me and I am glad he is doing the same thing with Afghanistan.
And then the shutdown, he meets with Democratic leaders, "proudly owns the shutdown", gets talked out of it by his advisors who know it's an awful idea, gets talked back into it by right wing pundits riling up their audience, and then shuts down the government with no leverage and no chance of success. His only possible "out" a declaration of emergency. A plan that was just a transparent ploy by his staffers to get him to sign a spending bill and then yell at the courts for blocking him instead.
I don't like what is happening, but at the same ti
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Because he seems to understand the bigger picture that the US military does not need to be involved in endless policing operations around the world. And maybe Trump made major mistakes in the how the draw down was announced in this case, but it is hard to tell given that a big part of the media tries to report everything he does in a negative light. In the end the policy seems the right one to me and I am glad he is doing the same thing with Afghanistan.
That's not how you do the bigger picture.
How the bigger picture properly works is you go down into the fine details, figure out what is going on, and then you go back out and see the high level details. You then learn to figure out which of the fine details matter and which ones don't, and how to put those details together into getting the big picture right.
Seeing the bigger picture takes a lot of hard work and analysis of all the little bits in that picture.
The mistake that people make, and Trump more than
Re: (Score:2)
How the bigger picture properly works is you go down into the fine details, figure out what is going on, and then you go back out and see the high level details. You then learn to figure out which of the fine details matter and which ones don't, and how to put those details together into getting the big picture right.
While I generally agree with what you are saying I think it is even more complicated. When situations become complex (war, economics, life) you will find experts disagreeing on fundamental courses of action. In the operation Iraqi freedom, it took several years for the military to eventually change their tactics largely based on John Nagl's analysis of a previous successful counter insurgency of Malaysia described in his book "Eating soup with a knife". It took a lot of failure to change the tactics and
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While I generally agree with what you are saying I think it is even more complicated. When situations become complex (war, economics, life) you will find experts disagreeing on fundamental courses of action.
Sure, but if qualified people can end up choosing A, B, or C that doesn't mean you should start choosing at random.
Not only are you less likely to choose the right among A, B, and C. But once people learn you're evaluating on the wrong criteria they're going to give you variants of A, B, and C that are much crappier that they should be.
So my point is that it is hard to find the right expert for a given situation.
But Trump isn't even getting the situations themselves right. Look at NK, there are two big directions pushed by the experts. 1) Be harsh and threatening enough that they hav
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Sure, but if qualified people can end up choosing A, B, or C that doesn't mean you should start choosing at random.
Trump started with #1 and almost started a Nuclear war by inflaming tensions with personal insults. Then he switched to #2, but he's doing it on the theory that NK is giving up its Nuclear weapons, which absolutely no expert thinks that's going to happen.
Maybe what you see as random is Trump trying different tactics that he think might work. If one tactic fails to work, do you continue to stick with it? Isn't that one of the primary lesson we have learned in all the wars we have fought. For example a tactic that worked well in Iraq did not work well in Afghanistan. So instead of constantly berating Trump for the mistakes, maybe we should commend him for being flexible and dynamic. In the wall situation, he was flexible in his negotiations, while the ot
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Maybe what you see as random is Trump trying different tactics that he think might work. If one tactic fails to work, do you continue to stick with it?
The problem is a) he's choosing terrible tactics to attempt, and b) he's doing a very poor judge of evaluating their success and knowing when to switch.
In the wall situation, he was flexible in his negotiations, while the other side was not willing to negotiate at all.
Not really. Last year I think the Dems offered $27 billion or something in wall money in exchange for DACA and some other stuff. Trump accepted the deal and then blew it up after the hardliners got to him.
For the shutdown he didn't offer anything. How budgeting is supposed to work with US style division of power is you say "I really want X and in exchange I'
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--- "To my knowledge, no such thing exists"
You are absolutely correct. But there is unedited footage out there if you look for it..
--- "doesn't mean it's true"
True again, but without being TOTALLY cynical, we have to start somewhere. But the new Anti-Trump religion is a little ridiculous, in my opinion...
And to correct my earlier post: I meant Feb 15th - I was thinking about 21 days when I wrote the date.
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THINK FOR YOURSELF.
Nothing more amusing than a crowd of Trump supporters intoning in unison - "Think... for... yourself. Think... for... yourself."
Wasn't that a scene is Idiocracy?
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Dear NPC,
Wow.. You nailed all the recent idiotic liberal talking points in one post! Congrats!
AKA, reality.
And we'll see whose caved on Feb. 21st...
Trump again. Either he'll:
a) Forget the whole thing.
b) Try Emergency Declaration and probably get slapped down by the courts
c) Get a deal with some form of "wall" but with a lot of goodies that the Democrats really want.
Whatever leverage he had he's already blown.
But the fact that you think ANY of this stuff is true, means he's won again.. and you people have fallen for it again. How many times does he have to checkmate before all of you on the Left stop playing checkers???
Is that a Scott Adams fan I hear? And how much has Trump really won since the election?
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Trump is a bit of a nuisance, no doubt about that. Most people would be happy not to hear any further news about him and most leaders of the rest of the free world avoid him, because he cannot be taken seriously, and instead have resorted to administrative-level diplomacy
The question is: Why? Why would anyone except a few billionaires continue to support him? The damage this presidency causes to your country will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired at all, and the international balance of power has already shifted away from the US to China, Russia, and the EU. On top of that, the US/UK alliance is broken and the UK is leaving the EU. I just can't figure out what would motivate anyone to support any of this, this amount of self-destruction make no sense. Let me be clear: I perfectly understand why people voted for Trump in the first place, what I don't get is how anyone could support such an obviously retarded, illiterate narcissist moron now after all the damage he's done and all that idiocy from him. It makes no sense.
Define "damage". Making European nations finally pay into NATO what they were obligated to pay?? How terrible. He, like many other americans, are sick of the US constantly being belittled by Europe, as they have been for the past 19 years, yet paying more than our fair share for *their* protection.
How much credibility and respect did we have in the world during Obama, when Russian planes buzzed our ships and Iranian fast boats harassed our navy every 3 weeks, and even took hostages, which Obama rewarded
Re: Why quit? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sounds like you need to take your own advice. But maybe first you should realize much is out there to read is just propaganda, approved by your masters.
If the Iranians were cruising around in the Atlantic in neutral waters, we'd have no right to actually attack and take them hostage. We might not like it, we might launch ships to keep an eye on them, but attacking, boarding, and taking hostages is an act of war.
We have long had a presence in the mid-east and that's not going to change. We were begged by Ku
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I would say that there are people who believe that securing the border is more important than funding NASA.
I'll come right out and say it. There are people in congress who believe, or say they believe, that all government programs that are not specifically and explicitly mentioned in the Constitution should be cut until the budget is balanced. They have a constituency who believes this too.
Now I don't believe that, but that doesn't prevent some representatives from voting that way. And a good number of citi
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Contractors are either prepaid or postpaid. They do not work for free, billable hours will be billed. A contracting company HAS to pay their employees and agency contracts, even if they were temporarily unpaid are invoiced because the contracts say so. It's one of the reason so many governments use contractors because they aren't counted as headcount and contracts cannot be affected by legislation.
Contractors [Re:Why quit?] (Score:2)
Contractors are either prepaid or postpaid.
Correct. The prepaid ones could work during the shutdown for as long as their contract continues. The post-paid ones could not: that would violate the anti-deficiency act, which says people can't do work for the government in anticipation of congress later deciding to pay them.
They do not work for free, billable hours will be billed.
Right. But it is ILLEGAL for them to bill hours if Congress has not authorized payment, so "do not work for free" translates to "do not work."
A contracting company HAS to pay their employees and agency contracts, even if they were temporarily unpaid are invoiced because the contracts say so.
Right. If they had a funded contract, they can continue working. It's only the ones that are
Exceptions [Re:Contractors [Re:Why quit?]] (Score:2)
Contractors are either prepaid or postpaid.
Correct. The prepaid ones could work during the shutdown for as long as their contract continues.
I should have added "could work during the shutdown UNLESS their work required them to be on-site (like, say, the janitors and cafeteria workers), or their work required them to work with civil servants (like, say, the secretaries), or their work required individual oversight by civil servants (like, say, technicians working on experiments overseen by civil servants), or they worked on assigned individual tasks that were billed on a task by task basis (like, say, graphic artists)."
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At KSC, it is worth noting that, of the 13000 people on site, 11000 are contractors.
Re: Why quit? (Score:1)
Re:Why quit? (Score:5, Informative)
So some people are looking at other agencies and private sector jobs where their work isn't interrupted as a bargaining chip. A five-week delay in many projects can result in months of lost progress and difficulties in rescheduling resources just to get back to where they were on Dec 22. If your expertise is in demand why not change jobs to get the same pay doing work that will actually result in something important.
So, yes, I understand why some employees changed jobs rather than stay home, uncertain how long they would need to wait for a paycheck, and frustrated about lost work.
---
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"So some people are looking at other agencies and private sector jobs where their work isn't interrupted as a bargaining chip."
Yeah, instead they can get laid off to improve the bottom line at any time, what a massive improvement
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". Work for the federal government was previously seen as lower paying and more bureaucratic than equivalent work in the private sector, but a far more predictable and a more steady income. Now it's not even that. "
Yes, it still is. Nobody with a good job should have no savings to fall back on. And my local credit Union was giving personal loans on very good terms to federal employees, specifically because that IS reliable work, and everyone expected those workers to get their back pay. If they're still doi
Re: Why quit? (Score:1)
Not Just NASA [Re: Why quit?] (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that all government agencies are facing the same problems why should NASA be any different
1. Because this is news for nerds, and nerds are interested in NASA, but less interested in, for example, Bureau of Indian Affairs.
2. Because there was a televised address to NASA employees by the NASA administrator, giving details. If there was a televised address by the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I didn't hear about it.
this is a waste of an article
Only if you're not a nerd.
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35 days later
More like: 15 minutes later
ISS ... Baikonur. We have a problem.
Who cares (Score:1)
China is doing far more launches than the us right now. US needs to catch up with China.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
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because of higher payload mass capabilities of US launch vehicles
Thank you, Elon.
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So clearly, you're either ignorant or a liar. Either government employess were forced to come to work without pay (like the TSA), or they were furloughed, meaning they didn't go to work AND didn't get paid (like the IRS). In NO way was there any "extra month of paid vacation" for ANYBODY.
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So clearly, you're either ignorant or a liar. Either government employess were forced to come to work without pay (like the TSA), or they were furloughed, meaning they didn't go to work AND didn't get paid (like the IRS). In NO way was there any "extra month of paid vacation" for ANYBODY.
This is a great example of "fake news". They'll all get back pay, nobody lost anything.
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This is a great example of "fake news". They'll all get back pay, nobody lost anything.
Are you for or against the statement? The post by NoNonAlphaCharsHere is correct and is pointing out the "fake news" (#3) from the AC post. If you said the fake news is from NoNonAlphaCharsHere's post, you are the one who is trying to spread fake news. And it shows that you have neither worked nor had friends working for the government but rather want to spout completely wrong information to others, who don't know anything about how furlough works, in order to support your own agenda. However, if you agreed
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Here a Kennedy Space Center, 11000 of the 13000 workers are contractors. Contractors do not receive backpay (although some of them could still work because their contracts were paid up). People seriously underestimate the size of the contractor workforce.
Re:Any NASA person who had financial difficulties. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Congress passed a bill to pay all 800,000 workers regardless of whether they were forced to work or furloughed.
https://www.govexec.com/pay-be... [govexec.com]
And contractors who had to come in are also paid as they were working (I was a contractor during the Gingrich shutdown back in the 90's and had to come to work).
The only ones likely not getting paid are the contractors that didn't go to work, which depends on the company as some would pay anyway or have their contractors work on other contracts, go to training, etc, and any of the support industry that depend on money from these workers.
[John]
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The employees still get screwed in a lot of cases, because most contracting companies don't have the resources to just pay all of their technical employees on indirect funds for 8% of the year (if they did it would mean that their overhead rates are too high), and just switching them to another actively funded contract probably screws over the customer on that active contract, because you can't just switch in a ton of temp workers for a month and expect to get a month of extra productivity.
How is this legal? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen other articles say similar things such as furloughed govt employees will not be given backpay. This seems to me unethical at the least, and should be illegal.
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I've seen other articles say similar things such as furloughed govt employees will not be given backpay.
I don't know what media you read, but every reference to this I've heard has been explicit that everyone gets back pay. Banks are making loans based on that fact.
It's just ridiculous fear mongering and political-based nonsense to say that contractors won't be able to bill for hours they've worked during the shutdown. The projects weren't cancelled, the funding was held up.
It would be interesting to hear how much of the time during NASA's first week will be taken up with meetings called by PHB dealing wi
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It's quite possible to lose money if you can't provide a service. The idea of an SLA is this alien to you that you can't imagine how to lose money when NOT providing a service?
True (Score:2)
Re: True (Score:1)
average age of NASA people just got older (Score:2)