Why is NASA bringing 7,500 contractors back to work as civil servants?

This is a massive shift in how NASA does business, and it’s not without controversy. But Griffin said he welcomes the change and believes it will be better for the agency in the long run. “I applaud Jared’s idea to get back to that kind of in-house capability and responsibility,” he said. Not everyone is a fan of Isaacman’s workforce initiative, which they believe has been rolled out too hastily and has been disruptive at the space agency. But because it is largely a fait accompli, almost no one has wanted to speak on record opposing it. For this article, Ars spoke to half a dozen people on background, including contractors who are now civil servants, industry leaders, and senior NASA officials to understand their concerns about Isaacman’s initiative. The largest and most directly affected contractors are Amentum, Jacobs Engineering Group, and KBR. Each firm provided a few thousand contractors to NASA for engineering and other services at field centers across the country. These companies say that radically departing from a workforce model that has allowed NASA to be successful for decades introduces uncertainty at a time when the agency is embarking on its most ambitious mission in decades, returning to the Moon and building a base there. But this is not really an effort to bring back people who were indiscriminately cut by DOGE. Isaacman’s changes are focused on increasing NASA’s technical acumen, and NASA has a considerably larger civil servant workforce today than before the outset of the second Trump administration—about 21,000 people. “I thought we were draining the swamp, not growing the number of civil servants,” one industry source said. This criticism aside, it reflects Isaacman’s political skill that he was able to increase the federal workforce at a time when the White House has been pushing for reductions. Rather than the cutting or even gutting experienced by some federal agencies, Isaacman seems intent on building NASA to be successful. To implement the workforce conversion, NASA’s 10 field center directors were tasked with identifying contract employees—particularly those tied to launch, operations, and mission-critical engineering capabilities—to bring on board. For some employees, this has been a disruptive process. Most, but not all, have been able to remain at their current location. And to be clear, many employees prefer to be civil servants. But there are some differences in pay and benefits, and contractors are basically told they must give up their existing job for a position at NASA—they cannot keep working for their contract firm. This has created churn and uncertainty, some former contract employees-turned civil servants say. And not all of them want to be government employees under the Trump administration. Beyond the frustrations of some individual employees, a broader concern among industry groups opposing the transition is that the current contracting system gives NASA flexibility. Under the previous contractor setup, if the agency decided to change directions, it could simply not renew a contract with a contractor. Civil servants have considerably more protections once hired by the government. “NASA over the last 50 years has built an incredible ecosystem that is specialized to serve NASA and other federal agencies,” an industry source said. “The system allows for flexibility and innovation by the companies. Now, that’s going to go away.” This contractor ecosystem also supports NASA and its efforts in Congress through lobbying. Some industry officials believe that if this contractor support goes away, NASA’s efforts to secure Congressional funding may be more difficult, and some of its programs will become more vulnerable. Isaacman and his leadership team have dismissed these concerns. They say they’re focused on the mission and that the current process is not working for the space agency. For example, one member of Isaacman’s team who worked on the Artemis II launch described confusion in the firing control room at Kennedy Space Center. When there was an issue on the launch pad with the rocket’s ground systems, the NASA controllers working the problem did not have direct access to the schematics. These were bound up by intellectual property and other contractor rules. The information, therefore, had to be conveyed to the flight controllers via screen sharing during a Microsoft Teams call rather than NASA being able to call up the schematics directly in the launch center. “You would be sitting there with some tool that’s livestreaming someone else’s display, trying to see a schematic,” this engineer said. “How effing absurd is that?” The goal of the workforce conversion is to ensure that the core functions in critical facilities at NASA are filled by civil servants to remove some of these barriers. Critics of the workforce initiative have used various lines of attack this year, including suggesting that its disruptive effects would impair NASA’s chance to return to the Moon, delay Artemis III, or increase safety risk. However, during a meeting at the end of August, NASA’s independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel—which is expressly tasked with identifying safety risks at the space agency—lauded the effort. The panel’s chair, Lieutenant General Susan J. Helms, said the workforce initiative had achieved “substantial progress” during its rollout. She noted that the process faced some challenges due to its “speed and scope” and acknowledged that organizational change can be unsettling. But she added that the panel has not identified any critical concerns. Moreover, the safety panel, which is often critical of NASA, offered a warm endorsement of Isaacman’s workforce conversion efforts. “From the panel’s perspective,” she said, “the administrator’s directive is a coherent and necessary vision for the future of NASA’s workforce.”