1. I am directing most employees to work from home tomorrow, Wednesday, February 7, so everyone can be in a safe, comfortable environment on a stressful day. Most individuals will not be able to enter the Lab during this mandatory remote work day. A Lab access list has been created and those who will have access will be notified by email shortly. If you do not receive an email instructing you to be on Lab, please plan to work remotely, regardless of your telework agreement status. In addition, and to ensure we have everyone’s accurate contact information, I am also asking everyone to please review and update your personal email and phone number in Workday today.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company or organization that had mandatory remote work day outside of really crazy weather during the peak of Covid. Perhaps it’s to protect the equipment from distraught or disgruntled employees?

  • Kaplya@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    It was a general comment, and I don’t see what you’re writing is anything fundamentally that disagree with what I wrote.

    Also, as far as chemical rockets go, yes the Raptor engine is still at the leading edge. But as I have said before, even chemical rockets likely won’t see any significant breakthroughs anymore, especially for deep space exploration. The breakthroughs I’m talking about is the next Sputnik moment, and it’s not going to come from NASA/SpaceX anytime soon. There is no such projects as you see.

    • seeking_perhaps [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      As someone in the industry, you missed the forest for the trees. There’s a lot more to space exploration than just launch vehicle development. SpaceX isn’t going to be doing bespoke Mars rover missions anytime soon unless it has a profit motive. JPL offers a very unique product in these one-off science-driven missions that the private industry has yet to be able to replicate and may never have the incentive to do so. Further gutting JPL just means losing out on those missions, which offer valuable scientific returns to the world. JPL is the reason we have rovers driving and a helicopter flying on Mars, oribters around the gas giants, satellites in interstellar space. The list goes on.