David, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you very much for having me.

Many government employees were terrified when Donald Trump was elected and when Elon Musk was made head of Doge because they knew that their agencies, like if they worked at the Department of Education, for instance, would likely be on the chopping block.

But how was Trump's election received by people at NASA, given that Trump is very much on record being obsessed with space travel and with rockets?

I think at the beginning there was probably a sense of expectation that, one, he was president before, and NASA did okay during the first

Trump administration. Right away, though, it became very clear. No, this guy is going to, he's going

to be governing in a very different way, or at least in a somehow more extreme way. And when it became

clear that a lot of people were about to lose their jobs,

a rightful sense of not panic, then certainly unease began to set in.

And that's exactly what transpired.

And the first thing that they did was try to get rid of probationary employees.

NASA survived that simply because of their

high operational tempo. And NASA said that we can't spare those people. Interestingly, when the RIF,

the reduction in force order came in, federal agencies had to report their plans to the Office of

Personnel Management and say exactly how they were going to be downsizing.

NASA had to get an extension on that. They couldn't submit their RIF plan right away because

the people that they were going to fire were so busy doing their jobs that there was no time

to plan on how we're going to fire them.

David W. Brown is a reporter who has spent years covering the space industry.

He recently wrote a fascinating piece for The Newarker about the changes happening inside of NASA

during the Trump administration.

Doge has come for NASA, just like it's come for the rest of the federal government.

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