
They Build Spacecraft and Fight Epidemics; Shutdown May Scare Them Away - JumpCrisscross
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/us/civil-servants-government-work.html
======
lultimouomo
Since there has been a couple of comment already about how the people in the
pictures are clearly not PhDs but cleaners (because they're not caucasian, I
suppose), I took 15 seconds to look up "NASA Gustavo Costa", first name
mentioned in the article:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gustavo_Costa16](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gustavo_Costa16)

~~~
roenxi
Which is really quite a baffling perspective. A stereotype/joke I was told
while young: if you see a scruffy, probably homeless, person near a good
university you should first check to see if they are part of the Math faculty
before making any further assumptions.

It is not possible to gauge intelligence or academic credential by visual
inspection, unless someone is wearing an academic gown. Some very accomplished
people positively seem to enjoy looking disheveled.

~~~
matt4077
It’s one of the remaining interesting parts of “signaling theory” that the
super-elite now commonly uses shabby looks to prove that they have nothing
left to prove. Only mediocrity needs a suit to be taken seriously.

~~~
humanrebar
Suits are basically uniforms. Sometimes literally.

Having a strict dress code isn't a sign of status in my book.

~~~
danmaz74
One data point: it makes me think first of all about salespeople.

------
ForHackernews
> NASA, a government agency as well-known as Coca-Cola back in his little
> Brazilian hometown.

I've noticed this when I travel--all over the world, I see people wearing NASA
t-shirts, everywhere I've been: Europe, Asia, South America. It seems like the
NASA meatball is globally popular.

Whatever the Americans are paying for NASA, it must be an absolute bargain in
terms of the good press and soft power it wins them worldwide. Can you imagine
any other foreign government agency that people would be eager to have on
their shirt? Was Roscosmos similarly popular during the Space Race?

~~~
jdhn
>I see people wearing NASA t-shirts, everywhere I've been: Europe, Asia, South
America.

I for one have never seen anyone in Europe wearing a NASA t-shirt, and that
includes American tourists.

~~~
stackola
You're not looking hard enough. I see NASA shirts at least once a week here in
Germany

~~~
saiya-jin
Well I haven't noticed any of those either, ever. Its true I didn't look for
it specifically, but anywhere outside US this would stick out at least a bit,
especially for a space nut like me. And I also include all the travelling I
ever done, on 6 continents, sometimes for months in a row when you mean tons
of folks including US citizens.

Neither I ever saw it in Geneva in Switzerland where I live, which is home to
CERN folks, many UN/NGO folks, banker folks, or generally quite international
folks. Maybe you keep seeing 2-3 people in your vicinity over and over?

------
afpx
Could a supporter of ‘the wall’ explain to me (after first taking a deep
breath) why it is a reasonable or even effective solution for illegal
immigration? To me, shutting down the government for this wall is a dangerous
and destructive temper-tantrum. Why are all other proposals being rejected?

~~~
gvb
This isn't about a wall or illegal immigration. This is about politics and
both sides using a government shutdown as a way of swinging popular opinion in
order to gain an edge for 2020 elections.

Historically, government shutdowns have been a very effective way of swinging
popular opinion against the party that is viewed as causing the shutdown.

The key, and what both parties are working really hard at, is to paint the
_other_ party as the "guilty" party for causing or not resolving the shutdown.

~~~
Armisael16
Historically shutdowns don’t meaningfully affect public opinion in the long-
term: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/164714/history-suggests-
shutdow...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/164714/history-suggests-shutdown-
stakes-may-not-high.aspx)

------
mattkrause
This is how my SO and I ended up in Canada.

The 2013 shutdown happened smack in the middle of our post-PhD job hunt. The
shutdown itself ‘only’ lasted a few weeks and directly slowed down interviews
at federal labs. However, the overall environment of uncertainty affected
hiring well before—-and well afterward. It also spread beyond actual federal
jobs to those that somehow interact with the government (contractors,
companies with federal contracts, labs that get federal grants). Nobody wants
to hire a new person just to lay them off a few months later, nor do people
(especially those making academic salaries) want to jump into such a
precarious situation.

So....I listened pretty carefully when someone from Canada made me an offer.
The salary was maybe a touch low by US standards, but it was available _right
now_ and likely to stick around. As a result, We have spent the past five
years training Canadian students, building up Canadian labs, and so on.

We think about coming home: we miss our friends and families, it does get
_cold_ up here, and living abroad can be strange. At the same time though, we
do need steady jobs for ourselves and our research.

FWIW, I don’t think we’re particularly special in this regard. Only two people
from my PhD cohort are still doing research in the US (1 academic, 1
industry). The rest have gone abroad or left research, in part due to the
crazy career uncertainty.

------
drallison
The point of the article is that the US Government employs people who do good
things (science, medicine, etc.) and that capricious management(for example,
government shutdowns or arbitrary censorship of research results) encourages
them to leave government service and work elsewhere. This is not a new
phenomenon but it is much more common under the Trump administration.

------
tomohawk
It's understandable that there is a lot of attention on those affected by the
shutdown, but what about all those who have lost their livelihoods due to
illegal immigration? These are American citizens who rightly expect that their
government that they pay taxes to will protect them. I keep hearing about
"jobs Americans don't want to do", but I know several people who were driven
from their trades due to this.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I agree that if illegal immigration is causing job loss to americans it is a
problem that should be addressed; I admit I don't have much education on the
subject. Do you know any studies to give hard(or even a range of) numbers of
the effect of illegal immigration on american job loss?

~~~
thechao
Question: are you looking for facts to support your opinion, or are you
looking for enough facts to determine what’s happening with respect to illegal
immigration & jobs in the U.S.? Because the story is complicated.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
The latter. My opinion on the subject can be summarized as 'I dont know enough
to opine, but if you have an opinion I'd like to see what you're basing that
opinion on'.

------
acheron
Govvies do not build spacecraft, contractors do.

Oh, and the article even starts out that way: "and it keeps him in steady
demand as a contractor at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center"... and then
immediately commits some slight-of-hand to start talking about the "civil
service", i.e. govvies.

Is learning to be purposefully misleading a whole class in journalism school,
or does it just come naturally?

~~~
sundaeofshock
I gotta ask: what the hell are you talking about? Can you demonstrate how this
is misleading?

~~~
mattkrause
The argument may be that contractors aren’t _technically_ government
employees. As part of the shrink-the-government-privatize-everything mania, a
lot of positions are now filled by contractors from Booz Allen, Kelly
Services, and a million other firms, large and small. These people work in
government facilities, often side-by-side with “real” government employees
whose paychecks come straight from Uncle Sam.

However, this argument totally misses the point. Some of these contractors
aren’t getting paid either—and I’m not sure if contractors always get back
pay. They are also limited in what they can—-and are allowed— to do without
their government counterparts. Finally, the bigger picture is that these
folks, along with federal employees, are part of a broader R&D ecosystem. Like
a real ecosystem, if you keep destabilizing it, it’ll eventually fall apart.

------
edoo
Spacex has proven NASA's only purpose is military industrial. It is a money
pit with poor results per dollar spent. National security has been made the
only excuse for the SLS.

~~~
ForHackernews
NASA has successfully landed eight spacecraft on the surface of Mars, millions
of kilometers away.

Nobody else (not the Soviets, not the ESA, certainly not SpaceX) has done it
even once.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterrestrial_bodies#Mars)

~~~
saiya-jin
true... and their budget for all this? timeframes?

