www.nasa.gov down

[NeoMorph]

What I don't get is that you normally pay for the website server a year in advance... Does the US government get a daily rate instead?

[Camacha]

I have seen two posts about the subject being locked for violation of forum rules, so all posters please keep it as unpolitical as possible.

I do hope the forum mods understand that this is political headline news but is also affecting NASA, spaceflight and science, hence on-topic.

I only referred to the moderation already being selective regarding the rules. I think that selective moderation is even worse than no moderation at all, as it leads to people not being accountable for their choices.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

Interestingly enough, it looks like the JPL website is still online: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/hijuno/

Hm yea interesting.

jpl.nasa.gov shows:

Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not being updated. We also cannot respond to comments/questions. We sincerely regret this inconvenience.

but the site is still online.

Not sure how to interpret the difference between this and the NASA main site. Could be that the JPL site is run by a subcontractor. Or JPL got someone doing admin jobs who is excempted from the shutdown

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

What I don't get is that you normally pay for the website server a year in advance... Does the US government get a daily rate instead?

nasa.gov is a big site and therefore needs an admin (-team), not just hosting.

If all your admins are temporarily fired you might have nobody to shut down the site even if you wanted to (like a hacker attack as someone suggested).

Could be that the guy who opens the gate for the employees is not coming to work anymore because of the shutdown, or the building insurance wouldnt pay if the janitor is not on duty for more than 24h... just making this up ofcourse.

[OdinYggd]

What I don't get is that you normally pay for the website server a year in advance... Does the US government get a daily rate instead?

I would imagine that they're just making a show of it. NASA is a sufficiently large government backed organization that they probably outright own the servers they use, along with the colocation plant they are installed in. Military ties and all that, having an onsite data facility would practically be required for them. Plus with the sheer amount of data processing involved in their work, it wouldn't make sense not to have that kind of capability.

Most likely they were told to take it offline anyway even though there really isn't a reason for it to be- it's just as vulnerable to hacking even with the error page replacing the site, and odds are they had go out of their way to set it up to do that instead of just letting it run unmanned.

And I know you can rig a server to be sufficiently fault-tolerant to endure a lot of punishment without requiring an admin's attention, with NASA's experience at making automated systems for spacecraft rigging a web server to be similarly robust should be fairly easy.

Oh and most servers have remote administration support as well. The admins can probably link up to it remotely to make software repairs as needed from wherever in the world they are.

Edited October 2, 2013 by OdinYggd

[Sax Man Aeronautics]

Yet the US Government can fund the servers to put this up.

[WestAir]

I work for the US Govt. Today, and any day following, I am working for free. No paycheck. I can opt to not work, but then I'll be fired when the mess is resolved. Rock and a hard place...

I wonder if this is how all the Kerbals feel who fly dangerous missions for free.

[Camacha]

I work for the US Govt. Today, and any day following, I am working for free. No paycheck. I can opt to not work, but then I'll be fired when the mess is resolved. Rock and a hard place...

Can you comment on the being fired when you do not choose to work? The deal is that you do work for money, right? So, how is not going to work not the logical outcome of that?

[Justy]

The principal engineer for Juno's WAVES instrument replied to my question on a ham radio forum asking if the event was still on:

Isaac Newton is in the drivers seat, Juno will perform the earth flyby as planned, the observation sequence has been uploaded and will execute as planned. Spacecraft operations is a critical activity and has not been shut down. Public outreach however is non critical, so there will be no updates to the website until this mess is over.

There is no reason for this event not to take place as planned.

Good news, Juno is taken care of. Better news, I'm going to transmit a signal to a probe on its way to another planet!!

[WestAir]

Can you comment on the being fired when you do not choose to work? The deal is that you do work for money, right? So, how is not going to work not the logical outcome of that?

My position is deemed "essential", so I cannot be furloughed. However, I won't be payed for the time we're in a shutdown. My financial obligations (bills or creditors) will obviously be understanding, and will accept an IOU for the period, so I'm not at risk of losing anything important. If the Department I work with is funded as normal, I will receive back pay, but it's not guaranteed. As for me choosing not to work because I'm not being payed, it will be marked as an AWOL on my record and once HQ opens its doors again, AWOL can be punishable by termination. That's the current situation, unfortunately.

I imagine a lot of people at NASA and other "essential" functions got the same e-mails as myself, and the same talks concerning the shutdown.

[Mr Shifty]

Good news, Juno is taken care of. Better news, I'm going to transmit a signal to a probe on its way to another planet!!

That's fantastic. Say .... .. for the rest of us too! Too bad we won't be able to see it pass by (unless you live in South Africa), but it's very exciting that it's passing this way again after two years orbiting out past Mars hurtling past the Cape of Good Hope at 33,300 mph on its way to Jupiter.

[OdinYggd]

My position is deemed "essential", so I cannot be furloughed. However, I won't be payed for the time we're in a shutdown. My financial obligations (bills or creditors) will obviously be understanding, and will accept an IOU for the period, so I'm not at risk of losing anything important. If the Department I work with is funded as normal, I will receive back pay, but it's not guaranteed. As for me choosing not to work because I'm not being payed, it will be marked as an AWOL on my record and once HQ opens its doors again, AWOL can be punishable by termination. That's the current situation, unfortunately.

I imagine a lot of people at NASA and other "essential" functions got the same e-mails as myself, and the same talks concerning the shutdown.

Ouch. Although when I did a little digging into this shutdown situation I found where the last time it happened was in 1996, and apparently at the time the president ordered back-pay to be issued to everyone who had been furloughed or had to continue working without pay.

Probably can't be helped, some jobs just plain have to be done on a regular basis.

NASA likely faces the same issue right now. Although construction of new craft is suspended, they have to maintain contact with existing ones and make sure they don't miss any planned communication sessions or missions could be lost.

Especially when talking to the older and more distant hardware like Voyager. A missed session could be fatal to it because the software might not retry at a predictable interval anymore.

[lajoswinkler]

How come I've never heard about "government shutdowns" in other countries? This is new to me, and it's baffling. It looks like something from the mind of a Mad Hatter.

"I don't like your thing, you don't like mine, ok so nobody will get anything, let's not work."

[Mr Shifty]

"I don't like your thing, you don't like mine, ok so nobody will get anything, let's not work."

It's a little more complex than this. And I'm making this as politically neutral as possible to try to avoid tripping moderator wires. There are enough votes in both houses of the legislature to pass a clean (no conditions attached) continuing resolution to fund the government. But, the leader in one of the houses will not bring a clean bill to the chamber for a vote because of fears of the political repercussions from a minority of the members of his party and some of the moneyed interests that provide campaign cash. It's easy for the media to sell a story of intra-party conflict and partisan gridlock, but in truth there is no gridlock; most members of both parties want to fund the government.

[Camacha]

I read someone said:

We are going to stop working, because we can't agree on how to spend the imaginary money we don't have.

I think that covers things nicely

If the Department I work with is funded as normal, I will receive back pay, but it's not guaranteed.

Ah, this makes more sense. I interpreted your story as being forced to work on, while not getting paid - period. I understand payment is not garanteed, but I sense it is sort of accepted as probably coming at some point. That is not totally fair either, but makes sense in the way that people are holding on to normality as much as possible. Just without money.

If you would not get paid at all it should almost be called slavery.

[Guest]

Comments removed. Previous post that I responded to is gone.

Edited October 2, 2013 by Otis

[Seret]

anyone who has read our constitution knows that we are not a democracy. The United States of America is a republic. They are not the same thing.

I hear Americans say this a lot, but never with any justification. The two aren't mutually exclusive. By the common definitions of the terms the US (like many other nations) is both a constitutional republic and a representative democracy.

[Guest]

I hear Americans say this a lot, but never with any justification. The two aren't mutually exclusive. By the common definitions of the terms the US (like many other nations) is both a constitutional republic and a representative democracy.

Our President is not directly elected by the people. He or she is elected by an electoral college. However, I do not disagree with your statements, because I am also confused about the difference between the 2. I think I just got my temper up a little bit because of the post before mine, which is now gone, or I'm losing my mind, which wouldn't surprise me either.

[Seret]

Our President is not directly elected by the people.

Neither are the heads of a lot of democratic governments (UK, Canada, etc). As long as your houses of representatives (Congress, Senates, Houses of Commons, etc) are elected by the public that's a representative democracy.

It's all just semantics though I suppose. I've heard some people try to argue that only a direct democracy counts as a true democracy.

[Nibb31]

It's not confusing. Democracy is a principle. A republic is an implementation of that principle. The US is a republic, but above that it's a democracy.

Democracy is the notion that the people gets to vote. Most modern democracies are republics (because direct democracy is impractical) although there are exceptions.

A republic is a particular implementation of a form of government where the power is in the hands of elected representatives. A republic isn't necessarily democratic. For example the Roman Empire or Ancient Greece were plutocratic republics, and China is a republic where the party elects the representatives, not the people.

The US, however, is a democratic republic, which is a form of democracy. Stating the opposite would be like claiming that the UK is not a democracy because it's a kingdom, when it is actually both.

Edited October 2, 2013 by Nibb31

[KasperVld]

Before we go any further I'd like to remind you should not derail this thread and that political discussions are not allowed on the forum ([thread=30064]forum rule 2.2b[/thread])

Edited October 2, 2013 by KasperVld

[czokletmuss]

Good news, Juno is taken care of. Better news, I'm going to transmit a signal to a probe on its way to another planet!!

Yes! So the worst won't happen

[Aghanim]

I will provide you all from a perspective of this problem from another country... First they retired the Space Shuttle, then this? Its really sad, but considering my country doesn't even have any orbital rocket capability at all

[Klingon Admiral]

First they retired the Space Shuttle, then this?

The shuttle should have been retired decades ago. It wasn't that great of a spacecraft after all.

[jwenting]

That would be truly disastrous. But aren't the people responsbile for Juno considered vital (or whatever this is called)?

the earth's gravitational field isn't going to change because the US government shut down

And no, vital employees are basically those responsible for national security and little else.

Border guards (skeleton crews), embassies, some counter terrorist and law enforcement activities, air traffic controllers, and that's about it.