• NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I work on one of these telescopes. Got the news today thay they’re trying to close Goddard, and the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, and basically all Earth observing satellite work. It would completely upend our ability to predict 7 day weather, extreme weather events like hurricanes, and make science basically inaccessible from space. I’m surprised they aren’t moving the funding over to SpaceX entirely.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      It’s fucking heartbreaking to see, as an astronomy and astrophysics enthusiast.

      At the same time, I hope that the loss in weather prediction capabilities leads to catastrophic damage to Mar a Lago and as many other of his properties as possible. And I admit that there’s a part of me that’s quite gleeful at the prospect of the maga-leaning parts of the country getting absolutely fucked by unexpected weather phenomena that will escalate in frequency and severity. Maybe it’ll render a bunch of those voters… unable to vote going forward, if you get my drift.

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        It really sucks. I legit feel like I might get kicked out of the space industry bcz of the dumbass administration. I will end up in the private sector making rockets for space tourism, which isn’t inspiring at all bcz, let’s face it. Going into space and being a billionaire isn’t all that special. But doing science for humankind, that’s something to aspire too, and they’re trying to take that away from us.

        • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 days ago

          There’s so much more to the private sector than tourism rockets! Consider:

          • Cheap components that don’t work

          • Cheap satellites that don’t work

          • Cheap lunar landers that don’t work

          • Pump-and-dump get-rich-quick schemes

          • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I’m stuck here, I have a career and I’m too old to start over in a foreign country. But I’ll be getting my kids dual citizenship elsewhere and encouraging them to leave if things stay the way they are.

        • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          For whatever it’s worth, I am quite sad that people like you are having their career motivations crushed by this idiocy. I wish I could help or move the needle in some way, because I think space exploration and pure science is fucking rad, but nobody gives a shit what engineers think anymore. They just plug us in to solve the problem just enough so that it’s an MVP and then don’t let us address any of the fucking tech debt. And I’m probably going off on a tangent here, but whatever. It’s Friday and I’m 4 beers deep.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          It was pure cringe how all these rich people just got back from space, like they think it’s an achievement, it’s nothing more than a rich person going to Everest . Shatner was quite disappointed

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        Aren’t they already getting fucked, their were quite a few storms that devastated the south recently, but MSM refuses to cover then

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        The anti science and intellectualism attacks has gotten worse. And stem was already teetering into abyss before, in terms of funding and stem majors finding jobs