The Conservative vision for America: cut infrastructure, let's see what happens... by Niki2

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The Conservative vision for America: cut infrastructure, let's see what happens...

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Friday, October 24, 2025 05:41
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Wednesday, August 27, 2025 8:12 AM

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo?

Trump Voids Billions in Funding to Raimondo Project
https://www.golocalprov.com/business/trump-voids-billions-in-funding-t
o-raimondo-project-prominent-ri-attorney-a

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Tuesday, September 16, 2025 11:59 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Protestors denounce cuts to NASA’s staff, budget and union rights
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/09/protestors-denounce-cuts-nas
as-staff-budget-and-union-rights/408127/

Voyager Declaration: https://www.standupforscience.net/nasa-voyager-declaration

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Saturday, October 11, 2025 10:04 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

the Chinese a once backward Communist Nation becomes a leading manufacturing powers, a leading economic power and tech power.

China approves $12.86 bln high-speed railway project in southwestern China
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-approves-1286-bln-hig
h-speed-railway-project-southwestern-china-2020-11-12/

If the rumors are true, JPL is about to suffer another huge round of layoffs.
https://x.com/CJHandmer/status/1974240270356201544

JPL, as an FFRDC, was always a bit separate from the rest of NASA and participated in the endless internecine fights for primacy, with other NASA centers envious of JPL's Mars business, earth science business, and other areas.

Periodically, JPL would do some insane space robotics feat with their own resources as an exercise in business development. For example, the Sojourner rover led to the subsequent rover missions. Perseverance brought the Ingenuity helicopter, but despite years of studies there have been no directed Mars helicopters. Instead, the Mars program got rolled up into Mars Sample Return, which then blew the budget so badly it has been effectively canceled. NASA currently has no other Mars missions in development. Five years ago, only JPL could land robots on Mars. Then China did it on the first try.

Meanwhile JPL, which was bursting at the seams five years ago with Psyche, Perseverance, Europa Clipper, NISAR, and MSR now has nearly nothing going on. JPL has gone through booms and busts before, but in the past its technology was advanced enough that it was critical infrastructure for military space, it had friends in Congress, and its competition from other NASA centers and private space companies was embryonic in comparison.

Unfortunately, I predicted this in a series of papers and a 2021 blog on Starship. JPL got complacent and it has been surpassed in many areas. It's an awful shame but it now seems to have very few champions who can help it out now, when its need is greatest.

It's bizarre to me that US space is running around with its hair on fire trying to figure out how to get humans back to the Moon, and much of NASA has either opted out, or been shut out, of this mission. JPL could have built an awesome human lander if, five years ago, they had been asked to and had had any interest in it. But the understanding was always that JPL would leave human space flight to Johnson, and in return, would get to do space robots. Now, during the shutdown, much of SLS/Orion is deemed sufficiently critical to keep burning money on their dead end project, but JPL, based at the wrong end of California, will find no savior.

I don't have any answers. It's just another chapter in a long, long book of bizarre and unstrategic public space policy. Nature gave us a perfect world with gravity low enough to launch from and surrounded us with a rich solar system full of interesting targets, and we spend most of our time arguing about weak rockets and slow robots, instead of exploring the universe. Maybe Nature had intended for the dinosaurs to build a space program and we just kind of got here unintentionally?

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Friday, October 24, 2025 5:41 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

No Education Department? No Problem, Trump’s Education Secretary Says.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/education-department-shutdown-la
yoffs.html

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