NASA staff are calling on Elon Musk to ‘clean house’ as it’s revealed the agency has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Spending reports from 2020 to 2024 show that NASA awarded grants to universities and consulting firms to support “environmental justice” and initiatives that “embrace greater diversity and inclusive practices.”
LMI Consulting received more than $2 million for NASA in 2023 to “begin a venture to integrate and deeply embed diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility into culture and business.”
Another $3 million went to Booze Allen Hamilton in March to support NASA’s “office of diversity and equal opportunity DEI data analytics specialty,” and $7 million was announced last month for six “minority-serving institutions.”
Amid this spending, employees have expressed concerns online about budget shortfalls, citing struggles with “limited resources” due to “wasteful spending.” Software engineer Kyle Sorensen said he hopes Musk will “clean house.”
Musk, along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to “cut excessive regulation, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.”
A former NASA employee told DailyMail.com that NASA’s DEI is “destroying America’s ability to compete with China in space because the Biden-Harris administration will only fund programs that include this.”
A NASA software engineer told DailyMail.com he hopes ‘Elon cleans house’ as the agency is hit by a budget crisis
NASA receives an average of about 0.4 percent of what the U.S. government spends annually, but still receives a budget of at least $20 billion.
Although the space agency has shelled out millions for DEI, data shows it generated more than $75.6 billion in economic output across all fifty states and Washington DC in fiscal year 2023.
Yet NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) laid off five percent, 325 employees, of its workforce this week and previously laid off 530 employees who were laid off in February.
The U.S. space agency began including diversity and equal employment opportunity in regulators’ performance plans in 2005, but did not hold leaders fully accountable until 2021.
This shift coincided with the Biden-Harris administration’s executive order emphasizing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility within the federal workforce.
NASA’s spending report, first reported by the Daily Signal, highlighted several universities that received NASA grants for environmental justice, including the Regents of the University of California, which received $250,000.
The fund was provided to support “Earth Science Applications: Equity and Environmental Justice.”
And in 2020, NASA allocated about $900,000 to the National Academy of Sciences, a private nonprofit organization.
Spending reports from 2020 to 2024 show that NASA awarded grants to universities and consulting firms to support “environmental justice” and initiatives that “embrace greater diversity and inclusive practices.”
Musk, along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (pictured), was tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to “cut excessive regulation, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.”
The grant was intended to “increase diversity and inclusion in the leadership of competitive space missions by establishing an ad hoc committee to recommend actions to enhance diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility in the leadership of space mission proposals.” enlarge.’
The Southeastern Universities Research Association also received thousands of dollars to make NASA’s heliophysics materials “more relevant and accessible to the Latinx and Native American communities.”
DailyMail.com discovered more DEI grants worth missions that were not published in the spending report, including the funds allocated to Booz Allen Hamilton.
The Virginia-based company is described as “a management and technology consulting firm that provides services to the U.S. government, military and other organizations.”
Although Booz Allen Hamilton has conducted space exploration research for NASA, the company has received or been promised several grants for DEI programs.
Reports from USA Spending.gov show a $3.3 million grant proposal issued in March for “NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity DEI data analysis and assessment.”
The award is scheduled for completion in August 2025.
NASA was plagued by cost overruns during the Biden administration, exceeding the roughly $99 billion taxpayers had paid by about $10 billion. The money has largely gone to the Artemis mission, which has been delayed
“NASA JPL will lay off nearly a thousand employees this year to make budget room for a plethora of ridiculous word salad DEI and environmental programs that contribute nothing to actual space exploration,” the former NASA employee said.
“DEI is a full employment program for people with otherwise useless degrees.”
An August report found that NASA spent more than $1 billion less on planetary science in the first two years of the 10-year period (2023 – 2032).
“If these trends continue, there will be a $5 billion to $11 billion shortfall in planetary science funding by 2032,” it said. the Planetary Society report.
“These missing billions will reduce the number of medium and small planetary missions, severely delay new flagship missions to Uranus and Enceladus, and severely limit options for implementing Mars Sample Return.”
The report suggested that NASA is not spending enough on planetary science, but has gone well over budget during the Biden administration.
Rudy Ridolfi, former space system commander in the U.S. Army, told DailyMail.com that “(the DEI funding) is a small amount relative to (NASA’s) research budget,” but with “the Artemis program overruns NASA should save every dollar’ of their budget.”
NASA was plagued by cost overruns during the Biden administration, exceeding the roughly $99 billion taxpayers had paid by about $10 billion.
When asked about the $10 billion cost overrun, John Conafay, a former U.S. Air Force officer who works in the NASA CFO’s office, told DailyMail.com, “It’s not good.”
“Artemis was the major program for the cost overruns. The Biden administration’s schedule and the concept of the Lunar Gateway were simply too much for NASA to accomplish,” Ridolfi said.
Conafay explained that the US has used cost-plus contracts since World War II. These contracts allow companies to renegotiate more funding when they encounter delays or problems, which has contributed to NASA’s budget challenges.
“A lot of people wonder, why are we doing this,” he said.
‘Why don’t we work with fixed price contracts? So it inappropriately encourages the free market to build what they say: they’re going to build on time and on budget. Otherwise, if it would cost them, right?’
DailyMail.com has contacted NASA for comment.