The CEO pulls me aside before the meeting, asks me to sell this as hard as I could, even though the mining development plan was completely stupid. Dangerously stupid.

I told them it was stupid. That there were better ways to do this.

Was rather satisfying, actually. After that it was clear that the majority of junior mining companies are stock scams. Pump and dump. Sold to people with gold in their eyes. The CEO did not care about producing a reserve, employing people… He just wanted to take money and be a big shot with a couple of mines. Travel the world on the investor dime. Pardnering with other companies that eventually got sued into bankruptcy.

I confess to feeling guilty for taking the money of a scam.

Did some work on a project where it turned out the company didn’t actually own the mineral rights. My buddy and I pointed that out after weeks or research. But he was a big entrepreneur, satellites and shit. But he knew nothing about geology or mining. “Just Get It Done! Tomorrow!”

Fuck you.

Musk isn’t smart. He’s a fortunate idiot that can pay people to make him look smart. Like Edison, he stole everything.

I- by good luck and the work of a talented team- have developed something a lot of companies like Starlink and Kuiper (Amazon’s company to compete with Starlink) will eventually need- but doing that work for billionaires will simply make money- I want to make a difference. So, as NASA fires the talented people that did the hard work that put me in the position I am in now, I offer to support their attempts to work for the billionaires if they want, I will write them tailored letters of recommendation and use my connections to help them get the job they want- if they would work for one of these billionaire mega-companies they would probably be paid more than what my new job will pay me…

I suspect that was one motivation for the destruction of NASA- to create a glut of talented engineers so that companies like SpaceX, Starlink, Blue Origin and Kuiper could pick them up at a bargain. I will not work for Bezos or Musk… but those billionaires would be lucky to get anyone on my team… so far the people I know forced out of NASA have not gone to Musk- we all know he is largely responsible for the destruction of America’s science institutions and would never work for him because we have ethics. A couple did go to Bezos, and I wish them the best- they will definitely make more money than they ever could at NASA and probably more than my next job will make me. They deserve the absolute best- an improbable chain of events allowed my project to get the absolute best of the best at NASA. Wherever they go they will outperform their employer’s wildest hopes.

For me, NASA – as it used to be- was the ideal job. I worked on interesting missions, had freedom to choose to work on whatever I found interesting, and – if I could convince the right people- I could create new projects (like the one I have been working the past few years)… and on the side I would be called upon to try to help solve problems in other projects. It was absolutely all I wanted in life. I regularly worked well beyond the hours I was paid for because I LOVED the work. My hope was to work like that until I died, or no longer was able to do the work.

All that is over, the NASA I loved is gone. It was a dream of mine since I was a toddler to work at NASA, but I chose to ‘retire’ rather than stay and watch its destruction. I have had to compromise as a result- I am giving up the freedom to research new ideas (unless I can demonstrate they will make a profit in the short term), but I still get to work on interesting topics and missions.

This is a tradeoff countless scientists and engineers are being forced to make- people that were creating entire new technologies and – as a result- new industries bringing countless millions or billions to the economy, they now have to settle for working in industry to make a product. This will be a devastating cutback in American innovation, and will cost our nation unknown trillions of dollars (yes, trillions).

Pretty much any of the most profitable industries in America would NEVER have existed were it not for the work of low paid government or academic scientists and engineers simply doing their work because they loved it, believed in it… not for a paycheck, but because its what they loved to do.

That is what we are losing with this administration. Science and engineering that has no obvious short-term profit, but over time leads to entire new industries, or results in life saving drugs and technologies. We are losing everything that made our nation the world leader in innovation. Now we are prioritizing short-term profit and weapons.

The costs to our nation economically, politically, to our (and the world’s) quality of life are immense, unmeasurable, and will result in the deaths of untold millions or billions of people. I really am understating things here, the costs will be catastrophic… the only question is the scale of the catastrophe.

The actions of this administration the past 9 months have ensured that the moon is China’s for the taking. There were technologies I wanted to use my project to develop that could largely destroy the profitability of the satellite mega-constellations like Kuiper, and Starlink and create entirely new, more efficient competitors. I was building a case for a lunar application for laser communication that would make the social changes created by the original moon landing look trivial…

I had to give that up. NASA is no longer in that line of work… It emotionally devastated me FAR more than I anticipated to turn in my badge and leave the gate for the last time. I won’t sugar-coat it… it was a week or two before simply getting out of bed didn’t take a huge exercise of will…

After I worked at Keck in the early 2000′s I vowed to NEVER allow my job to become an essential part of my identity… I thought I had succeeded, but leaving NASA made it clear I failed that vow.

It has taken 3 months for me to feel like I have STARTED to find myself again… and that is just the start of the recovery. There is a long way to go still. I am making it through- I am in a far better situation than most in my position. I am 100% certain there WILL be people and families completely destroyed by this, there WILL be suicides. And as tragic as all that is, it is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of damage to our society.

We are witnessing a change in world order, a change for the worse. Fascism around the world (and obviously here in the USA) will rapidly become the norm. I very nearly chose to leave the USA for lower paying jobs in the EU… I fear that I will end up regretting not doing that move.

I can remember the exact moment when I realized global fascism was inevitable… it was during the Bush vs Gore fiasco. December of 2000. I was still smoking cigarettes, finishing up my graduate research… I had stepped out to smoke in the parking lot of the Brookhaven National Lab’s chemistry building… Bush was clearly going to be the next president and ignoring the global warming issue was clearly part of his agenda.

I remember thinking through what that meant… we would lose our last chance to avoid climate catastrophe… as a result- eventually- hundreds of millions or billions would die, climate refugees would flee to first-world nations, the flood would become a tidal wave, and the xenophobia in the first-world nations would allow fascists to take power, everywhere. Fascism was inevitable, I realized… and there was no way to avoid it, there was likely no foreseeable end other than the collapse of civilization and MAYBE rebuilding from the ashes- more likely though was the slow painful demise of humanity.

I consoled myself by thinking that all this would happen long after I was dead… MAYBE it would start as early as the 2050′s but that seemed unlikely … I also cheered myself up by considering the possibility that fusion would be perfected by 2020 and that would offer hope…

I was depressed, but I had no desire to have kids- this was a problem for the future generations –at that time I needed to concentrate on finishing my PhD so I could move on with my life- besides, the future is not set in stone, I could be completely wrong…

I put out the 2nd or 3rd cigarette I had smoked on my break and went back in to continue writing my PhD thesis (and probably posted on the zone as it existed at that time). I knew there was a good chance my efforts, all of humanity’s efforts, were a waste because it was all doomed to end badly … but at the time all I could do was behave as if there was a meaningful future, where my efforts, no matter how small, would contribute to the future of humanity. And besides, I and my wife (at the time) would almost certainly be dead before the shit hit the fan- of that I was sure…

I do wonder now… if I had known just little time remained before things started to fall apart… would I have chosen a different path in life…?

I honestly don’t know. I feel…some satisfaction I guess with what I have done so far…? I could have done more, but at the cost of enjoying life to the degree I have… but knowing then what I know now, would I have just dropped out, devoted my life to pleasure, adventure, Bacchanalian delights? Would I have become a radical- fighting in vain to prevent the inevitable?

Probably not much would have changed, though I definitely would have tried to find a more direct path to working at NASA than the bizarre circuitous route I ended up taking… I have enjoyed doing what I have been doing the past 16 years… even if- ultimately- it all ends up meaning nothing because humanity throws it all away.

Who knows what different choices I would have made, had I been cursed with the knowledge of what was to come…

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

-1856 written by John Greenleaf Whittier

Perhaps even more apt is the satirical rejoinder written by Greenleaf’s contemporary Bret Harte:

If, of all words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are, “It might have been,”

More sad are these we daily see:

“It is, but hadn’t ought to be.”

The “system,” now more than ever, plays to greed. Landlords profit simply because the cost of rent has gone up astronomically. Rent prices are dictated by investors just coming into the market. The person who owns just a few rental properties follows suit, increasing their rent but incurring no actual cost increase. It’s a windfall.

The price of homes increased rapidly within the span of just a few years. In Seattle, your annual income must be $220,000 just to qualify for a mortgage. This places home ownership out of reach for wage-earners. A home used to be the carrot that people worked for. The stick is now far too long to be effective anymore.

The software techno-feudalists did work hard. But they came up with a product with no production costs. The startups can outsource the business acumen if needed and are left with just the cost of overhead. Another windfall.

I don’t follow the Gates Foundation, but on the face of it, it looks like Bill is giving back—trying to make the world a better place. The new tech giants have no such agenda, and have something Gates didn’t have: a lust for power.

None of them worked as hard as a single mother working 3 minimum wage jobs trying to feed their kids… the billionaires don’t work harder… as for smarter? Hell no- just listen to the bullshit claims they spew loudly every day- They were lucky to have the money to hire real geniuses and profit from their work. How many frustrated Einsteins lived their lives picking vegetables for well under minimum wage because they could not afford the insane costs of higher education? The person forced to ask you if you ‘want fries with that’ could have been the person to cure cancer… if only the wealth wasn’t concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller percentage of people. Took chances? Please… tens of millions are one bad week from being homeless, or having to choose between medicine or keeping a roof over their family’s head.

Billionaires didn’t ‘EARN’ that wealth… NO ONE deserved that sort of wealth when the people that work for them have to go on food stamps to survive.

They are pathologically greedy assholes that have to pointlessly increase their wealth so they can look down on others…

So far I have been lucky to get paid to play with very expensive science toys- I get a nice salary, but do I deserve it more than the desperate woman trying to keep her kids alive? Hell no… I Had luck, the right parents, the right zipcode growing up… I could afford an education….

These tech-bros are just Narcissists that invent a fiction to feel better about themselves while sniffing ketamine…

They are expensive human garbage.