Chapter 411: A Brand New Nasa
If spacetime doesn’t get tangled, Lin Ran coming to serve as the bridge between new NASA and old NASA would be even more bizarre than Lei Zong waking up one morning to find global media overwhelmingly reporting on Xiaomi.
“Professor, I know what I’m saying sounds very strange to you, but this is our real idea.
Old NASA is ineffective in its bureaucratic part.
But the engineering capabilities, technology patents, and massive industrial foundation of those corporate entities, we hope to retain, not destroy.
We need to thoroughly reorganize it.
We hope to do it like China.” Jonathan said.
“In China, the main body of the aerospace undertaking is your national space agency, and core entities like Aerospace Technology Group.
One brain, several strong arms, efficient and unified.
In America, we only need two as well.”
Jonathan drew two circles on the architecture diagram in the notebook.
“SpaceX and General Aerospace.
SpaceX is responsible for all vehicles, from launch to transportation, using the lowest cost to build the highway to the Moon.
And General Aerospace is responsible for everything else: lunar rovers, life support systems, space station modules, communication networks. It will integrate all traditional NASA contractors’ aerospace business, becoming an unprecedented super giant focused solely on spacecraft themselves.
For NASA, I only need to oversee these two companies, instead of facing hundreds of suppliers who shirk responsibility and have deeply entangled interests like now.
For the companies, layoffs and business reorganization in private enterprises are far simpler than layoffs in the federal government.”
A crazy but logically consistent plan.
Most importantly, it involves huge profits.
The reorganization, layoffs, and mergers and acquisitions of so many companies—this is how massive the profits, and General Aerospace is a listed company, so how much cake is there to share in the middle.
Isn’t this exactly the kind of big deal that Big T loves most?
“In the past, this was impossible.
Congress, White House, and Pentagon would not allow such a monster to emerge.
But now, under the dual blows of pressure from China and the VIPER scandal, it has become possible.”
As for why Elon doesn’t negotiate with John Morgan himself? No need to ask, bad relationship, no foundation of mutual trust.
To pull off something this big, the interests involved are so massive.
In a sense, Lin Ran is currently the only middleman trusted by both sides.
Big T is too, but Big T is too old to personally handle a deal this big with Joe.
The room fell silent.
Lin Ran knew deeply that this was a massive plan capable of thoroughly changing NASA, and yet they needed him, the opponent, to act as the middleman messenger and guarantor.
What magical realism.
“What do I get?” Lin Ran finally spoke, “I’m not the NASA director, nor the United Nations secretary-general. If I help you integrate America’s domestic aerospace industry and complete this feast of giants, what do I and my country get?
Don’t tell me NIL, that’s just the chip telling you how to get to the Lunar North Pole. For pushing a deal of this level, it’s far from enough.”
I’m not the NASA director now, if I help you pull off this big move, what do I get?
Jonathan said: “Non-discriminatory access to the supply chain.
General Aerospace, for all its non-strategic general industrial components needed, from specialty bearings to high-end sensors, we will convince the White House to open the procurement list to Chinese suppliers.
You will become an indispensable part of this new giant’s supply chain.”
Lin Ran shook his head: “First, the probability of you convincing Congress to repeal the Wolf Amendment is very low. Second, this isn’t a favorable condition; it’s you needing China’s industrial manufactured goods, not China needing your market—especially in the aerospace field.”
Jonathan quickly said: “Professor, you’re absolutely right. Yes, we cannot repeal the Wolf Amendment.
But you seem to have forgotten that General Aerospace is a private company, not NASA.
If the Wolf Amendment is in effect, how could General Aerospace possibly procure F-2 engines from you?
We will find a hundred ways, through its subsidiaries in Lion City or Switzerland, to place orders with China under the name of commercial procurement.
These orders will fully comply with local laws and international trade rules.
The Wolf Amendment restricts NASA as a federal institution, but it cannot stop a private company from buying the world’s best non-strategic industrial components.
This is a loophole in the law, and also a characteristic of America.”
Lin Ran asked: “What’s the difference between you doing this and what NASA did in the past? They imported whole vehicles from China, and you import components from China and then do final assembly yourselves?”
Jonathan explained: “Professor, we’ve never thought we could hide it forever. Precisely because of the great Mr. President wanting to bring manufacturing back to America, this gives us the perfect reason to do it.”
These officials from Washington throw around ‘great’, ‘wise’, ‘bright’, and basically any positive adjective onto Big T.
Jonathan isn’t even an official yet, and he’s already infected.
He continued: “Bringing manufacturing back to America—what does that mean? It means we don’t have manufacturing now, and without manufacturing, we can only buy, right? China is the only country with a base on the Moon; your manufacturing has been tested in the Moon’s harsh environment.
That’s the best reason. Why not buy from traditional allies like Germany or Japan? At the hearing, we just need to counter-ask: Have their products been verified?
That perfectly avoids all attacks.
Even Mr. Elon plans to proactively reveal all this; he will publicly disclose how many components we currently source from China.”
Lin Ran added: “Announce every year the proportion, how much the America-made proportion has increased, as his performance record managing NASA, right?”
Jonathan didn’t feel embarrassed at all: “But, professor, Chinese companies will get massive orders and revenue in this process. NASA controls a trillion-dollar lunar fund.
It can equally bring vitality and motivation to China’s aerospace industry.”
Lin Ran shook his head: “Not enough, far from enough. China’s aerospace industry development has little to do with me.”
Jonathan continued: “Ansys, Dassault Systems, Synopsys, and Cadence—all the latest versions of these software are on the strictest export lists of our Department of Commerce’s Industrial and Security Bureau.
Every upgrade authorization requires lengthy review.
In return, Mr. Musk will leverage all their political influence to ensure that any application from Chinese supply chain companies providing services to the civilian project General Aerospace will have their export licenses for these top-tier industrial software fast-tracked and approved.”
Lin Ran laughed: “Jonathan, you still have some misconceptions. These are certainly important, but now China doesn’t even want you to loosen export controls.
Because even in industrial design software and simulation software, we need to support Chinese companies; we can’t rely on the Europe and America camp’s software ecosystem.
In my view, it’s not a benefit at all, but poison—a slow poison.
So let me tell you, the only reason I’m helping push this is: I want America to become a real opponent, not like now, just trash-talking while actually decayed, fallen, and internally corrupt and chaotic like NASA.
Looking at NASA now, honestly, I’m very disappointed.
That’s not the great institution that once sent humanity to the Moon; it’s a soulless zombie.
Playing chess with a zombie is very boring.
Musk’s purge and his crazy but efficient new system let us see for the first time the shadow of an opponent rekindling its fighting spirit.
That’s good.
Rest assured, I will communicate with the Morgan father and son.”
Lin Ran waved his hand, thinking this was the last thing he could do for NASA.
Before leaving, Jonathan stood and saluted to show respect.
He thought, if NASA back then hadn’t lost an opponent like the Soviet Space Agency, would it have fallen to this level today?
Probably even if it degenerated further, it couldn’t have degenerated to this extent.
Jonathan recalled his direct superior at Aerospace Corporation, the two generations of Robert father and son, vice president-level figures with no faith at all, only caring about how to make money.
He clearly remembered old Robert wasn’t like that when he first joined the company; back then everyone was obsessed with restarting the Apollo Moon Landing, and then seamlessly building a base on the Moon. From when did old Robert change? Jonathan recalled—it seemed to start from 1991.
Jonathan looked back at the tightly closed door; he vaguely saw the flame of idealism burning fiercely. This time, can we really win? Jonathan came full of confidence, but after coming, he felt no chance of victory.
Why did Lin Ran agree? Because bluntly, under the push of huge profits, old NASA represented by General Aerospace and new NASA represented by Musk would eventually come together.
He’s just giving a push along the way, a favor with one sentence.
This is determined by huge profits. Musk dares to kick the NASA system, but he can’t and has no way to offend the military-industrial complex and the congressmen behind it.
If Musk dares bypass procedures and announce termination of a severely delayed space station module contract handled by Lockheed Martin, a dozen senators and congressmen from Alabama, Florida, and Colorado will immediately jointly hold a press conference, harshly condemning the new NASA director’s recklessness, claiming it will lead to loss of thousands of high-tech jobs, and threatening the strictest review of NASA’s next annual total budget.
If Musk keeps doing this, the pressure will quickly pass to the White House, and Mr. President will have to step in and call it off.
If he persists further, who knows where a gunman might pop up to send him to meet God.
Musk will inevitably be dragged into Washington’s swamp.
He’s only temporarily out of the swamp now, but eventually he has to negotiate with the swamp, cooperate with the swamp.
No matter how much you want to work, you have to fill the swamp’s appetites.
This isn’t the original timeline with a simple 20-30 billion dollar annual budget; NASA’s annual budget has risen to 500 billion dollars, plus the trillion lunar fund left by the former president.
Such a massive cake isn’t something Musk can eat alone.
Musk must compromise with old money like Morgan.
This compromise includes sharing the cake, and also which Commissioner Smiths in the entire NASA system need to be removed—not all Commissioner Smiths deserve a share, not all Commissioner Smiths can’t disappear, and how NASA’s suppliers improve efficiency, changing from just sharing money without doing work to doing work to share money.
So Musk’s revealing of the lunar rover scandal and live conference is just a start; the real big part is ahead.
As for why find Lin Ran, the president personally stepping in would work too, but Lin Ran has an extra advantage: using industrial Cthulhu’s production capacity to guarantee their reform will bear fruit and keep pushing forward, something even the president can’t do.
Whether Lin Ran would agree, Musk didn’t know; he could calculate all other steps, only this one he relied purely on feeling, and facts proved his feeling was right.
“We’ve put in so much effort and finally gained a window advantage over them in the space field.
Now, why should we turn around and help an opponent we’ve beaten senseless, integrate his strength, let him stand up again, and become an even stronger enemy?”
“You’re absolutely right.
From a purely zero-sum game perspective, it does seem like subsidizing the opponent.
But what we face today is a situation more complex than a zero-sum game.
Our ultimate goal in the current strategy against America is not to defeat America, but to surpass America.
Defeating a chaotic, declining empire holding 6,000 nuclear warheads would be an unbearable disaster for us and the whole world.
What we need to do is build a more efficient, more advanced, more attractive system, so that in the course of history, it naturally hands over that first place.
What we want is a peaceful, civilized power handover.”
To achieve this goal, we must avoid midway engaging in a hot war with a cornered, hysterical America, especially before our own internal energy is fully cultivated.
Now, what’s the situation inside America? A country in strategic panic due to our technological breakthroughs.
This panic is breeding an extremely dangerous irrational emotion.
Their internal military-industrial complex and conservative congressmen are hyping our threat, even discussing whether to launch a preemptive strike while we’re still developing.
And Musk and Morgan, what do these two represent?
They are the purest and most rational embodiments of American capitalism.
They may be arrogant, greedy, but they are absolutely not stupid.
They believe in commercial competition, technological crushing, not mutual destruction via military adventure.
So, helping them integrate America’s domestic aerospace industry seems on the surface to make the opponent stronger.
But in reality, we’re helping America’s rationalists defeat those crazies whose heads are clouded by panic and hate.
Handing a powerful, unified new NASA to businessmen like Musk and Morgan is far safer than letting an out-of-control, military-industrial complex-hijacked old NASA continue stirring up trouble on Capitol Hill against us.
This at least buys us another five to ten years of strategic development window.
More importantly, we haven’t paid anything.
Musk and Morgan would naturally come together; our aerospace upstream and downstream companies would develop anyway, getting a share of the trillion-dollar cake out of thin air. What we help them land is the Lunar North Pole, which is an obligation to fulfill in the deal anyway.
So they get something for nothing, and we do too.
We only need time, and we’re only short on time.”
Just as Musk promised, he made NASA transparent.
Late October, he fulfilled his promise from the live broadcast on X platform.
NASA official website underwent a complete overhaul, with the homepage turning into a 24/7 live wall named “NASA LIVE”.
Here, you can see real-time construction footage of the 39A launch tower at Kennedy Space Center, assembly of robot rover prototypes in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and of course, the most eye-catching and most frightening: live broadcasts of the weekly engineering review meetings of the Artemis Acceleration Council.
Initially, America and even the world cheered this unprecedented extreme transparency.
Though now the world’s number one aerospace agency is Apollo Technology, but Apollo Technology doesn’t open-source. Musk directly open-sourced NASA even further.
So much so that Simplified Chinese netizens were sighing: Good thing Apollo Technology built the base on the Moon first, otherwise we’d see on social media again, Saint Ma open-sources once, and China rockets go to the Moon one after another.
And American public for the first time felt that this mysterious institution that consumed their countless taxes finally opened its doors to them.
But soon most American public stopped watching.
Because this isn’t a warm scientific exploration documentary; it’s a workplace horror game.
Musk frequently quotes Big T’s classic line: You’re fired!
Who wants to come home after work and feel the low pressure from Musk.
Take the most recent Wednesday progress meeting live as an example.
The live footage is fixed: an unadorned wide-angle lens aimed at an ordinary meeting room.
Musk sits at the head of the long table, surrounded by old NASA employees.
“Next topic,” Musk quickly swipes the tablet in front of him, “Heat shield tiles for the lunar version Starship.
We need to complete the first high-altitude reentry test of the prototype tiles in Q1 next year.
Steven, no, sorry, Dr. Steven is gone.
So, Dr. Williams, you are now the acting supervisor of the materials science department.
Tell me, progress.”
The camera turns to a black woman named Aisha Williams.
She is a veteran scientist who has worked at NASA for over twenty years and made outstanding contributions to the space shuttle heat shield materials project.
“Director,” Dr. Williams replied, “Based on our assessment last week, the new carbon-carbon composite prototype performed stably in a wind tunnel test simulating 1100 degrees Celsius.
But to enter flight testing, per NESC-STD-2023 safety protocols, we still need at least six months of ground fatigue testing on microcrack propagation under multiple thermal cycles.”
Musk impatiently interrupted her: “I’m not asking about protocols. Protocols are written by bureaucrats to avoid liability. I’m asking about physics.” His speech rate began to accelerate, questions firing continuously.
“What’s the theoretical thermodynamic limit of this new material in degrees? What’s its specific heat capacity? Thermal expansion coefficient? At minus 170 degrees Celsius in lunar night, what’s its brittle fracture threshold? Have you built the mathematical model? How many simulation runs? Where’s the data?”
Dr. Williams had seen colleagues many times flustered under such questioning, but when it was her turn, she still felt caught off guard by this process-breaking, core-technical questioning style.
Having been in the NASA system for a full twenty years, she was long accustomed to the well-prepared, step-by-step reporting mode.
“Director, for these specific data, I need to check with my team.
They’re scattered across different test groups.
Per process, at quarter-end, we’ll compile all data into a complete report and submit to”
“So you don’t know now?” Musk interrupted her.
“I can’t give numbers precise to three decimal places right away.” Dr. Williams tried to defend.
“I don’t need decimals; I need an order of magnitude, one that as department head should be engraved in your brain.” Musk looked at her quietly, silent for five seconds.
Then, he turned to his assistant Evelyn Reed sitting beside him.
“Evelyn,” he said, “By 5 PM today, find me someone who can answer all my previous questions. One is enough.”
He turned his gaze back to Dr. Williams and said the words that had terrified all of NASA in the past two months: “Dr. Williams, thank you for your twenty years of service to this country. Your service ends here. HR will contact you for next steps. Meeting adjourned.”
With that, he closed his notebook computer, stood up directly, and left the meeting room.
The live broadcast ended abruptly at that moment.
This wasn’t the first time, nor the last.
In the short 60 days since Musk started the NASA live broadcast era, 37 NASA mid-to-high-level managers and senior experts were fired on the spot in such public or semi-public settings.
And data compiled by a New York Times reporter revealed a trend that enraged Donkey Party supporters: among these 37 fired personnel, 28 were women, minority ethnic groups, or openly LGBTQ+ group members.
Among them, the proportion of black women scientists was disproportionately high.
And those promoted to fill these vacancies were over 80% young white or Asian male engineers from private aerospace companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Orbital Rocket.
NASA’s live broadcasts, more like live layoffs than meeting streams, quickly caused intense division in American society.
Liberal media and progressive groups angrily accused Musk of turning NASA into a Silicon Valley garage full of toxic bro culture.
Silicon Valley garages like all-white-male, everyone brothers, frequenting all sorts of pleasure spots.
They believe Musk’s so-called first principles and results-orientation are just excuses to destroy the diversity and inclusivity policies NASA spent decades building.
Believing Musk is discriminating in the name of efficiency.
Conservative media and supporters hail Musk as a “hero against political correctness, reshaping American spirit”.
Fox News commentators passionately defended: “Musk doesn’t care about your skin color, gender, or who you love! He cares about only one thing: can you build the best rocket fastest to beat our enemies! Those fired weren’t because of their identities, but their incompetence! They just hide behind thick process manuals and diversity umbrellas, wasting taxpayers’ money!”
Mr. President is Musk’s biggest supporter; he thinks Musk’s behavior is simply great.
In this timeline without DOGE, Musk is busy at NASA helping the president build the big T base on the Moon, and what he’s doing is cutting diversity and the Washington swamp—both the actions and targets make the president especially satisfied, which is a key reason he’s succeeding so smoothly.
To explain more: Most NASA employees are federal civil servants, protected by extremely strict laws like the Civil Service Reform Act.
Firing a federal employee requires lengthy complex legal procedures, including performance evaluations, written warnings, appeal hearings, etc.
On-the-spot firing in a live broadcast is absolutely and completely illegal.
The next day, NASA’s union could directly sue Musk to court and almost certainly win.
So what Musk says in live broadcasts—”you’re fired”—can only target employees with senior positions, because most of NASA’s senior positions require high-level security clearances.
And granting/revoking security clearances is the absolute power of the president’s executive branch; Congress and courts can hardly intervene.
Musk can submit a report to the White House claiming a certain supervisor is no longer fit for the post.
The White House can then legally suspend or revoke that supervisor’s security clearance.
Once the security clearance is lost, the supervisor can’t access any classified projects, and legally loses qualification to continue the original duties.
At that point, reassigning them to an idle consultant role becomes perfectly natural.
And by then, does it matter if they’re still at NASA?
Both Musk and the president are experts at bypassing rule constraints.
In this environment, many old employees unable to adapt to this high-pressure culture, especially women and minority ethnic groups, began quietly sending resumes to universities, research institutions, even the European Space Agency.
This also indirectly improves the problems existing inside NASA.
Lin Ran, far away across thousands of miles, found it too interesting watching the news: Does this count as me indirectly achieving what I originally wanted to do in this spacetime but couldn’t?
