NASA Wants DOGE Co-Chair Elon Musk to ‘Clean House’ after Fiscal Disaster of Biden’s DEI Agenda
NASA spent millions on DEI and ‘Environmental Justice’ grants while laying off real scientists doing actual research and innovation.
In an exclusive report, the UK Daily Mail says NASA staffers want President-Elect Donald Trump’s co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders reveal the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Spending reports from 2020 to 2024 showed NASA awarded grants to universities and consulting firms to support ‘environmental justice’ and initiatives that ’embrace greater diversity and inclusive practices.’
LMI consulting received over $2 million in 2023 for NASA to ’embark on a venture to incorporate and deeply engrain diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility in the culture and business.’
Another $3 million went to Booze Allen Hamilton in March to support NASA’s ‘office of diversity and equal opportunity DEI data analytic specialty,’ and $ 7 million was announced last month for six ‘minority-serving institutions.’
Amid these expenditures, staff have voiced concerns online about budget shortages, citing struggles with ‘limited funds’ due to ‘wasteful spending.’ Software engineer Kyle Sorensen told he hopes Musk will ‘clean house.’
The Daily Signal also covers the nature of DEI grants and money giveaways NASA has allowed to occur, propelled by the Biden DEI mandate. Millions were also squandered chasing after “environmental justice“.
NASA has allocated roughly $10 million to pay out dozens of grants and contracts aimed at advancing some element of environmental justice or DEI since 2020, federal spending records show. The agency is multiple billions of dollars short of the funding required to complete its current missions, has fired hundreds of people working on its Mars missions over budgetary concerns, and may not have enough funding to maintain a multibillion-dollar space telescope, according to multiple Washington Post reports.
“The environmental justice movement focuses on ensuring communities receive equitable protection from natural and human-induced environmental hazards,” NASA’s webpage on equity and environmental justice reads. “It embodies the principle that all communities should be heard and represented in decision making.”
Much of NASA’s grant spending went to universities to help them study environmental justice in urban areas as well as other places with high concentrations of racial minorities. For instance, the agency approved $150,000 in funding to Columbia University so it could pair “earth observations and socioeconomic data” and enable students to do environmental justice work in New York City, records show.
Another grant, this time worth $250,000, was paid out to Los Angeles as part of NASA’s Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program, per federal records. To remedy its observation that “people of color often face higher exposure to air pollutants,” NASA’s PEACE program paid the city to provide pollution data to its residents in “a way that works across communities and cultural differences and specifically analyzes, engages and responds to needs for environmental justice.”
It appears that once Trump takes office and eliminates DEI, root and branch, a a great deal of waste will be eliminated…not only from NASA, but wherever else it has taken hold in the federal government.
Elon Musk is showing NASA what can be done when you don’t focus on DEI quotas and gender theory.
You can actually make space travel happen.
This right here is massive stuff! pic.twitter.com/hhjTi7ZIfs
— Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) October 13, 2024
Who knows, we may be able to get enough progress in our technology and rockets to do both a crewed moon mission and to send a uncrewed mission to Mars by 2026. Right now, the Artemis III mission is scheduled for September of that year.
But there is going to be a whole lot more efficiency and a great deal less waste to meet the lunar objectives.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is forging ahead on its Mars plans.
SpaceX is planning to send five uncrewed Starships to Mars over the next few years, CEO Elon Musk said on his social media site, X. According to Musk, SpaceX has to wait for the next Earth-Mars launch window before sending the missions. These windows occur when Mars and Earth are lined up in such a way that flights between them take the least amount of energy and time. The next window is in 2026, and should SpaceX miss that deadline, the next launch window is late 2028 into early 2029.
If the uncrewed ships land safely on Mars, Musk anticipates sending crewed missions during the 2028-29 launch window. If the tests don’t succeed, the company will try uncrewed missions again in the 2028 launch window, and push the crewed missions back to the launch window after that.
No wonder NASA is hoping Musk can use the DOGE-force to help.
NASA to Elon: pic.twitter.com/0NeXT4UdcX
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) November 18, 2024
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Comments
Democrats fear Elon Musk. And for good reason. He’s half Einstein and half honey badger.
Ending all gov’t grants entirely seems to be the only way to prevent grant related shenanigans. Then eliminate gov’t contracts with NGO, ‘Charities’, 501C3 and ‘non profits’ to stop clever workarounds. The govt bureaucracy and politicians can’t be trusted not to waste taxpayer dollars by sliding $ to their ideological allies so we gotta totally eliminate their ability to do it.
Many, maybe most grants serve a legitimate purpose, meaning not DIE-based. That might mean throwing out the baby with the bath water. Determining the criteria to distinguish between the two would be a challenge.
.
Which was worse for NASA:
1) Biden’s DEI disaster
or
2) Barky’s fundamental transformation of NASA into a muslim propaganda outfit
same-same
A distinction without a difference?
Downsizing your own company is a lot easier than doing it to the federal government.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Mr. Millei down south is showing us how it can be done.
While the President must eventually spend the funds appropriated by Congress for their authorized purposes that’s been previously interpreted as by the end of the fiscal year. So ….just don’t spend any $ on salaries of programs, agencies or departments slated for downsizing or elimination ..until September. Do that and I suspect much of the problem with downsizing Federal personnel will work itself out.
“Help! Help! Come liberate us!” the “victims” cry, as they hurriedly heap dirt atop their old uniforms and jackboots.
“Another $3 million went to Booze Allen Hamilton”
I know the “e” is really, really tempting, but it’s not there.
Trained in the 2+2=22 methodology,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG8KR9edp9Q
NASA can eliminate the branches that are doing nonscientific work. The employees in those branches can, under government rules, bump junior people in positions they are qualified for or take an advertised job opening that they are qualified for. Most NASA positions will be GS-80X engineers, Physicists, or Chemists, and a DEI-type person probably has a social science degree and is not qualified.
Or they have an engineering degree or whatever that they did not earn. There is a business opportunity screening people for competence, both currently employed and pre employment.
It seems like pretty much everything they do anymore is nonscientific work. They can’t even run a taxi to the Russian space station.
agreed, but universities have been handing out STEM degrees to just about anyone with a room temperature IQ for the past 15 years (open book exams, doncha know?)
Yes. I have a friend at a national lab who tells me he has to spend a lot of his time educating the new hires. They lack stuff we had as sophomores. Like the Laplace Transform. How do you get a degree in electrical engineering without good facility with the Laplace Transform? Harvey Mudd College used to be an excellent engineering school. Then around 20 years ago they decided to have diversity in their enrollments. These diverse students can’t do the work so they demonstrate, and complain. The national lab he works for used to hire from the top of the class, now having a pulse is enough.
I used to interview applicants in the old days. Bad enough then. I asked one fellow from Brigham Young what book he was using for linear algebra, and he said, “I don’t know, I think it has a green cover.” That was in the early 1990s. The good old days. Much worse now.
In regard to the open book exams – That’s what we were doing in chemical engineering in the 80s. But the joke is on the people who think that makes the test easy. On the first test in thermodynamics the average score was 29. One guy got 100 percent and I got an 88%. (he went to medical school after his junior year in college) But the point is is that in the real stem areas tests are not multiple choice Where you Select the right name of something but you actually have to work out a problem. It begins to simulate the real world where you have to work out real problems and you’re allowed to use all of the References.
NASA Bolsheviks strip the treasury and use those funds in patronage-clientelism schemes. Everything downstream is tainted.
E.g. Newsom just spent the past few days in DC securing fed grants to fund his clientelist programs before Trump shuts the spigot; he just announced a ~$370m grant for “affordable” NorCal housing programs.
One only rents mercenaries; they don’t stay bought for long.
Parkinson’s Law:
1.) “Newsom wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals”,
Unless the funds are paid out by January 21, grant funds can always be held regardless of the initial award decision. I hate that the federal government continues to bail out deep blue states who would be bankrupt if not for nationwide taxpayer handouts.
The wrong stuff! Why not shut down NASA altogether? It suffers from mission creep to the extent there mostly creep and little mission. NASA has big effort in climate change. What does that have to do with manned space travel?
I’m not a fan of manned space travel either. Far cheaper to use robots. Not clear that humans can tolerate very long periods of weightlessness. Manned missions might require some kind of artificial gravity. Expensive. As for Mars colonies, Color me skeptical. Although I’m persuadable given a good argument.
Manned space travel is ridiculous because it’’s expensive and completely unnecessary. It’s also likely impossible with today’s technology. It may be impossible forever.
I have always viewed hiring people to be based on past performance. Now it appears that DEI and other metrics are the dominant reasons for employment. In an agency like NASA, ability, and performance should be the ONLY reason for employment.
Boeing and the Secret Service also made the mistake of hiring according to DEI quotas rather than the ability to do the job.
Biden also used executive orders to politicize the awarding of research grants. University faculty depend on these research grants to get and to keep their jobs. (unless they are DEI faculty, who are judged differently.)
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-ruthless-politicization-of-science-funding?sra=true
The administrators who OK’d DIE and environmental grants should be weeded out.
DEI should be totally defunded — no public or tax funds, if you want to reward stupid, do it with your own money.