NASA Force

Two things:

- I like the rolling Moon animation very much.

- This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during a budget squeeze, presumably with the hope that some of those they attract will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again. I guess it's also a neat kind of try-before-you-buy for both sides. NASA is prestigious and one of the very few places one could do purely science-focused aerospace engineering, but it's still a government job under all the gold leaf and atomic robots.

EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.

"Build a website - it's almost like you got the job done already" - Someone in the White House OEOB

The new National Design Studio that replaced the USDS does not seem to be capable of building a website that is accessible, performant, and not overly bombastic / hyperbolic.

Completely unreadable. Animation fails at the top, on a decently provisioned Mac laptop with 16GB of RAM.

Either way - it's unfortunate that the Technology Fellows, GSA, and other programs that brought folks into industry for roles exactly like this were unceremoniously destroyed in quite cruel and silly ways. Why would I apply for this? Fool me once...

> NASA Force technologists inside the systems that power American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery.

Am I an idiot or does their leading sentence make absolutely no sense?

Why is this called Nasa Force when the linked job is for an Areospace Engineer? The usa.jobs site only shows 15 open reqs for Nasa, and they are almost all engineering roles, save a few accounting/finance ones.

Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees?

I'd love to work for Nasa, but I live in Portland, OR. Does this geo basically disqualify me from ever joining Nasa?

And the pay range for the aerospace engineer is okayish, but it's not really out-competiting more senior tech folks in any capacity.

Cool website, Big Balls. Where's our social security data?

NASA "Force?" It sounds very similar to Space Force and Air Force and adds a militaristic tone to NASA. Maybe that is the intent. I know that NASA and the military are closely linked but the general brand of NASA is a the science-focused civilian side while something like Space Force would be the military side.

The first sentence isn't even a sentence.

This really screams and reads like a crypto scam or something, also why would they not use the official NASA logo ?

This is so strange.. I'm still not even clear on what it's for..

My 5090 couldn't handle that starfield at the beginning. I got a 1202 alarm just scrolling down..

Spaceflight requires relentless deliberate progress.

An exploding job-recruitment offer might not attract the kind of folks we want designing a system that absolutely must work after a decade in space.

I've worked with NASA and ESA employees/contractors who've made technical miracles happen in space. I don't think any of them would be drawn to this style of recruitment.

"NASAFORCE technologists inside the systems that power American spaceflight, aeronautics, and scientific discovery."

First hire should a verb.

Did anybody else peep this? https://ndstudio.gov/

I am confused or misinformed. I thought the administration has severely gutted nasa, did it not? Yet they are doubling down on the brand?

Another barely usable website from the "National Design Studio." I wish they'd take a cue from gov.uk (or even the US Digital Service and 18F, which they gutted) and build clean, functional, and accessible sites... but the crew of web developers who are willing to work for this administration seem way too obsessed with this defense-tech startup landing page aesthetic to care about usability.

The developer of this scroll-smoothing JS library [1] has a lot to answer for.

[1]: https://www.lenis.dev/

10.5MB page weight for a landing page? This national design studio is...not great.

Is this gig-workification of the space industry?

Experience necessary. From Assessment 1, which you only get to after spending $16 ordering your college transcript...

> I have 1 year of directly related specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-13 level in the Federal service that included: Performing program/project management of space, aeronautical flight systems or experimental aircraft/aircraft systems that involve planning, researching, designing, developing, testing and evaluating, or completing cost analyses; Analyzing, designing, or operating space flight systems, aeronautical flight systems, experimental aircraft/aircraft systems, or structures operating throughout the earth's atmosphere; Developing requirements and integrating aerospace or flight/ground systems (e.g., payloads, hardware/software, scientific instruments, communication equipment, cargo, or any other specialized equipment).

you can tell this was generated with Gemini, the way it loves to do those "enter on scroll" sentences

The initial lightspeed animation lags on my beefy gaming desktop.

Why does the application window last four days?

Charitably they're moving fast, but without already having people in mind for the roles or having created the hiring pipeline, how do you reach a sufficiently large audience. Is there an explanation I'm missing? Was this announced a while ago?

Makes it feel like they already know who they want for the roles/preferential selection. On a longer or recurring timescale, seems like a cool way to reach out to potential hires.

NASA FORCE: When you want to figure out how your stargate works, but have a limited budget for the research.

I would love to work for NASA so much even at a significant pay cut, but almost everything I've read in the past was they still do drug screenings for a lot of positions I was interested in. Maybe someday they will pull their heads out of the dark ages.

This, THIS is how any org signals they don't have a budget. Build a "fancy" high-concept paper-thin-veneer website that's adjacent of their extant canonical DNS.

Also, it really, really doesn't help that they're attempting to riff off of the "Space Force" BS.

FWIW, the NRO https://www.nro.gov/ has been the actual "space force" for over half a century.

Did anyone scroll down far enough to see the "automate air traffic controllers"? I guess technically it's aeronautics but I didn't know that was part of NASA

So is this collecting signups for new GS-12s? Or is this program able to offer more competitive compensation?

NASA should have co-opted "Space Force" from the get-go; funding might not have been such an issue

Cheesy, with "join the Army" vibes, but maybe it'll appeal to some dude out there, I guess

Wonder what the job security is like.

Searching for more DOGE-boy wrecking balls?

Such urgency. They're definitely racing China to the moon.

the timer and urgency of this reminds me of the movie Armageddon where they had limited time to form a crew for a space mission.

So are they defunding NASA or not?

I think the hint of violence was deliberate.

Pretty cool. We're getting much better govt. websites now.

> More opportunities will be posted here in the coming months. Click here to sign up for updates to stay informed when new roles open.

Which links to: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/sKWkWfp

Would anyone like to do some citizen journalism and see if the Constant Contact data handling is done above-board. I've done some Claude research -- enough to make me suspicious -- but I Am Not A Lawyer.

How do they have budget for this but not for decent production values on the Artemis 2 livestream?

I'm just gonna leave this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEC-Marconi_scientist_deaths_c...

Based on the name I’d thought it was going to be another militarization project, thank god it isn’t.

I envisioned a tactical unit like For All Mankind. I can’t imagine that China would allow the US to colonize the moon. It’s effectively an infinite nuke factory. Any Heinlein fan would recognize that.

> ...for a few days, access is granted to this work. The number is extremely limited. The window only lasts four days. Will you answer the call?...

What? This sounds like a phishing email from before phishing emails got good.

Guys, I figured it out. This isn't just a 4-day window for an Aerospace Engineer position, that's just the beta test. They're preparing for calling up a wave of volunteer civilians who want to spend a few months on Mars (and maybe even come back).

Why anyone would willingly leave the private sector to work for this administration of charlatans, rapists, drunkards and grifters is beyond me.

Wait till there’s a new administration. Vote for sanity first. Then let government stabilize. Then join. Not now.

These job postings opened today on April 17 and close in four days (on April 21). This is highly compressed and highly unusual.

Being no fan of the current administration and its hangers-on, my brain quickly jumps to less flattering reasons for these short time windows. A four day application window favors people they want to select. They may well have told certain people in advance to be ready. I don't have direct "proof" of this, and I'm open to learning more, but the current administration has beyond exhausted any presumption of fair dealing.

I encourage anyone and everyone interested to apply and report back. NASA has a good mission and its needs people with a moral backbone and intrinsic pro-science drive.

This is so cringe. Who are the people behind this god awful "national design studio", and how are they related to MAGA / Trump? Assuredly yet another insider cronyism deal that degrades trust in the US government.

Claude:

The National Design Studio (NDS) is a new White House agency that Trump created by executive order on August 21, 2025, as part of an initiative called "America by Design." It lives inside the White House Office of the Executive Office of the President.

The setup

The executive order established the NDS along with a new position: Chief Design Officer of the United States

Trump appointed Joe Gebbia (Airbnb co-founder) as the first Chief Design Officer

Gebbia previously worked at DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) alongside Elon Musk on modernizing federal retirement paperwork

The stated goal: overhaul roughly 26,000 federal websites and physical government interfaces to be "both usable and beautiful" — Gebbia has compared the target experience to "the Apple Store"

Initial results are required by July 4, 2026 (the US 250th anniversary), and the temporary organization within NDS is scheduled to sunset after three years