The last decade has been devastating to NASA competence. At JPL, people quit starting in Obama era after NASA forced Caltech (which runs JPL) to institute clearance checks higher than necessary. After that, they mandated covid shots or get fired. So people left. I see it as a drain of the smarter independent people. When I was there, there was an undercurrent of achiever-political mindset in management, leading to stupidity in some areas. Not all but enough. I don't know whether the Mars mission has dumb people on staff, probably not all but maybe some. I do know that Caltech hence JPL is undercut by political correctness now, and some equal opportunity hires, which is deadly for engineering and science. For instance, Caltech no longer requires SATs, which is leadign to less qualified student being admitted. If JPL HR is now more SJW, that will bring in stupid people.

The last decade has been devastating to NASA competence. At JPL, people quit starting in Obama era after NASA forced Caltech (which runs JPL) to institute higher clearance checks than necessary. After that, they mandated covid shots or get fired. So people left. I see it as a drain of the smarter independent people. When I was there, there was an undercurrent of achiever-political mindset in management, leading to stupidity in some areas. Not all but enough. I don't know whether the Mars mission has dumb people on staff, probably not all but maybe some. I do know that Caltech hence JPL is undercut by political correctness now, and some equal opportunity hires, which is deadly for engineering and science. For instance, Caltech no longer requires SATs, which is leadign to less qualified student being admitted. If JPL HR is now more SJW, that will bring in stupid people.