Under president Donald Trump and his number one henchman Elon Musk’ orders, swathes of NASA are being laid to waste — and staffers are fuming.
As CNN reports, mass layoffs gutting three offices this year have resulted in employees questioning the space agency’s new leadership.
Workers affected by the layoffs were only given 30 days’ notice — instead of 60, as spelled out in federal government guidance — and have even been denied time-off awards. Sources told CNN that some affected employees won’t receive bonuses, and won’t even be able to reapply to other roles in the agency.
That kind of disregard for federal workers — a key characteristic of Musk’s systematic dismantling of the government — left them speechless.
“I think we were targeted,” one source told CNN. Denying bonuses in particular came across as “extremely cruel and callous and needless.”
Why exactly NASA needed to excise its budget in the shortest time frame possible has enraged staff, including those still at the space agency.
“Everybody’s lost confidence,” another employee, who has not been laid off, added. “What was the urgency? It just seems cruel.”
Another employee told the broadcaster that “despite what Trump says, NASA is using a hatchet and not a scalpel” to cut jobs. A source also warned of a “significant brain drain that will affect not only current missions but engineering and science for generations to come.”
Despite seemingly treating its employees with active disdain, NASA’s interim administrator Janet Petro argued that their efforts were still valued.
“I’ve said it before — change is never easy, and I know there are a lot of questions about what’s ahead,” she wrote in a March 14 email obtained by CNN, four days after the layoffs hit. “I want to assure you — the NASA workforce — and your skills, expertise, and commitment are at the heart of [reduction in force] discussions.”
It’s been an extremely confusing couple of months for the space agency. A massive prior round of layoffs affecting more than 1,000 probationary workers in February was canceled at the very last minute by White House officials.
NASA is also anticipating the swearing in of billionaire tech founder — and SpaceX space tourist — Jared Isaacman to replace Petro. It remains unclear what has delayed that decision for months now. It’s possible officials are still evaluating Isaacman’s considerable conflict of interest, given his close connection to Musk’s SpaceX.
In short, NASA has lost a tremendous amount of goodwill among its staff, meaning that Isaacman will ultimately be tasked with picking up the pieces. Whether he’ll manage to right the ship and effectively lead an agency that’s still planning to visit the surface of the Moon before the end of the decade? That might be a moonshot.
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