Jared Isaacman spoke at the a16z event
Keith’s note: Jared Isaacman spoke at the a16z event about the lack of core competencies and extensive outsourcing at NASA is “why we’re $100 billion deep into [Artemis]”and how OPM is working with NASA and the new NASA Force effort to reverse that. Of course NASA just lost a lot of its workforce – so this is an effort to bring back some of what may have been lost as well as attracting new skills to the agency. Comments and video below:
@a16z Tweeted: “What stands out… is just what a large portion of our core competencies have either been lost outright over the years, or we’ve outsourced.” @NASAAdmin Jared Isaacman on what he found after visiting every NASA center:
“You take a look at a program like America’s Return to the Moon with Artemis — five prime contractors, hundreds of subcontractors, and 75% of your workforce, not partners, not commercial partners, are contractors through staffing agencies.”
“They’re all using different software tools, collaboration tools, different HR systems, talking to different prime contract subcontractors. Is it a surprise to anyone that we’re a hundred billion deep into this, years behind schedule? No, I mean it’s right in front of you.”
“Mission control is outsourced. I gotta imagine that would shock most people — when the astronauts come over the radio and say ‘Houston,’ and the person responds back, it’s outsourced.”
“People have been freaking out since I’ve said, since last Friday that we are going to get back into the habit of launching moon rockets in months, not years. Apollo 7 to Apollo 8 — nine weeks apart. We’re on a cadence of every three and a half years, and they’re like, ‘that doesn’t make any sense.’”
“No, we’re going to go back to doing what we did before, because we’re going to rebuild the workforce that knows how to do these things.”
“NASA’s got to have those core competencies back within the agency.”