Thread: Laborers from India replace Americans at NASA

Because of new loopholes in the H-1B visa process, American citizens are now being locked out of many of the projects that NASA funds in favor of first picks from India, many of them untrained temporary laborers who are replacing experienced American citizens. Now that we know that banks and auto companies want to use bailout money to fire American workers and hire more Indian replacement workers, I guess it won't be long before NASA goes begging for bailout money, too...

http://www.zazona.com/NewsArchive/2003- ... 0H-1Bs.htm

Plutonian H-1Bs
Date: Saturday, May 24, 2003 7:32 PM



JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com


Since I'm an engineer (unemployed but still at heart an engineer) I
like reading stories about how NASA is reaching to the outer planets. I
really took notice in the article below that the company that will be
managing the navigation of a NASA deep-space satellite to Pluto will be
a company called KinetX that's located right here in Phoenix, Arizona.
Yeee, Haw!

Everything sounded positive until the end of the article where it was
explained that KinetX got the contract because they underbid all their
competitors, including the NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. KinetX claims
that they were able to underbid everyone because they have "low
overhead" but they never explained that by using the cheap young blood
of foreign workers the overhead is very easy to keep low. JPL can't
hire H-1Bs directly because they require citizenship for most positions
so the deck is really stacked against them when they have to compete
against private contractors.

One way companies can underbid competition for government contracts is
by employing cheap labor. The Labor Condition Database confirms that
KinetX hires H-1Bs. Once again, the LCA database is a smoking gun - or
in space terms, an exploding supernova.

Workers on H-1Bs have been involved in two of our latest space fiascos
- the Mars explorer and the Columbia Space Shuttle catastrophe. Those
NASA planners have brains as dense as a massive black hole or they
wouldn't continue to allow their contractors to hire cheap H-1Bs. Low
cost engineers often lead to shoddy work and NASA is a grim reminder of
that.

For more information on the H-1Bs that NASA used on the Space Shuttle
go to the following link:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Library/ ... rs_DoL.PDF

To see the LCAs that KinetX filed to hire the H-1Bs go to:
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
and
http://www.zazona.com/LCA-Data/
It's necessary to use both databases because the ZaZona.com database
has two older LCAs that are still valid until 2004. Perhaps by that
time the satellite will crash so KinetX won't need them anymore.

After the first article follows a letter to the editor that was
published in the Dallas Star Telegram by Dr. Gene Nelson that explains
just how bad NASA's problem is.



http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... etx23.html

NASA picks Tempe company for Pluto mission

Hal Mattern
The Arizona Republic
May. 23, 2003 12:00 AM

The planet Pluto, discovered 73 years ago by an astronomer at the
Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, now has another Arizona connection.

KinetX Inc., a privately held Tempe company with 35 employees, has been
selected to navigate a spacecraft on the first NASA mission to Pluto,
in 2006. The goal of the mission is to study Pluto, and the findings
may help determine whether it really is a planet or just a hunk of icy
space junk.

FYI

KinetX Inc.
Founded: 1992.

Headquarters: Tempe.

Business: Engineering and software development for satellite ground
systems, telecommunications, navigation and orbital dynamics.

Employees: 35.

Annual revenue: $4 million.

The company also won a contract to navigate a spacecraft to Mercury
next year.

KinetX is the first commercial company selected to handle navigation
for a NASA deep-space exploration mission. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology has always
performed that function.

"We're the first on the block," said Bobby Williams, a former Jet
Propulsion Lab engineer who now is director of space navigation and
flight dynamics at KinetX. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance."

KinetX is no stranger to space programs. The company was founded in
1992 by a group of Lockheed engineers with experience working on
satellites. The firm's first contract was with Motorola to work on the
Iridium satellite telephone project.

The company also worked with Spectrum Astro on a space-based missile
detection system.

Waiting on authorities

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it joined with another
East Valley firm, Cogitek Corp., to develop a remote-control system
that allows ground crews to take over operation of planes if the pilots
lose control. They submitted their plan to the Federal Aviation
Administration and the Transportation Security Administration but have
not received a response.

KinetX President Kjell Stakkestad said the two deep-space projects
represent a new direction for the company and already have raised its
profile.

"We used to work behind the scenes, but we are in the forefront now,"
Stakkestad said. "We're getting offers to partner on other projects.
Other stuff is coming open because of the potential notoriety from
these missions."


Mission to Mercury

The Mercury spacecraft is expected to launch in March and orbit and
photograph that planet. It will be the first Mercury mission since
Mariner 10 flew past the planet three times in 1974 and 1975.

Even though a spacecraft could reach the planet in a few months, the
mission will take five years because it requires two Venus flybys and
two Mercury flybys for the spacecraft to match Mercury's orbital
velocity.

In the Pluto mission, it will take nine or 10 years for the spacecraft
to reach the planet and its moon, Charon.

Pluto has always intrigued astronomers, and doubts have been raised as
to whether it is even a planet. Some astronomers contend it is an
object from the Kupier Belt, a disk-shaped region past the orbit of
Neptune that contains several small icy bodies. Some scientists think
the Kupier Belt is the source of such things as Halley's Comet, among
others.

Getting it there

In the mission, called New Horizons, the spacecraft will explore Pluto
and its moon, and then will fly by at least one Kupier Belt object.

KinetX will navigate the spacecraft and operate its camera.

"Our job is to make sure it gets there," Stakkestad said.

KinetX was able to move into deep-space navigation after hiring
Williams, who spent more than 24 years at the Jet Propulsion Lab and
has a strong track record on NASA projects. He led the team that landed
a satellite on the asteroid Eros in 2001, the first time such a feat
was accomplished.

The Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, which is
running the New Horizons mission to Pluto for NASA, chose KinetX
largely because of Williams and other experienced staff members.

'Right software'

"We had worked closely with Bobby for several years," said the Carnegie
Institution's Sean Solomon, who was hired by Johns Hopkins to lead the
Mercury mission. "He changed to KinetX, and we stayed with him. We made
our decision based on our belief that KinetX had the right staff and
the right software to do the job."

NASA has been planning for years to transfer some of its technology to
the private sector and open its missions to more competition. The
KinetX contracts are seen as a breakthrough in those efforts.

But that doesn't mean other private companies are going to rush in and
compete with the Jet Propulsion Lab for deep-space navigation
contracts.

"NASA has moved the technology into the commercial sector, and it is
certainly open to anyone who wants to try it, but you have to know how
to use it," Williams said. "It takes years of experience, so we are
uniquely positioned."

Status quo changing

The selection of KinetX has led to some jealousy within the space
contracting industry. Williams said the company has been "getting some
heat" for beating out the Jet Propulsion Lab for the jobs.

"A lot of people don't like what we are doing," he said. "It changes
the status quo."

But Solomon said the fact that a private company, especially one as
small as KinetX, can do the job is good for the space industry. Because
the company is small and has low overhead, he said, it was able to
offer a lower bid for the project.

"I think the competition is healthy," Solomon said.

Reach the reporter at hal.mattern@arizonarepublic.com or (602)
444-8652.

------------------------------------ http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/5154249.htm

Posted on Tue, Feb. 11, 2003

In the aftermath of Columbia
Star-Telegram

"Faster, better, cheaper" -- with the accent on cheaper -- has been
NASA's mantra since the Challenger disaster in 1986.

What many Star-Telegram readers may not know is that a special federal
visa program called H-1B probably will be seen as one of the systemic
causes of the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1.

As a former NASA employee, I know that the agency strives to maintain a
positive public image. This probably is the reason that few holders of
H-1B visas are directly employed by NASA, as shown by the unique
public-access database at www.ZaZona.com.

Instead, the H-1Bs are employed -- for lower wages -- by such
contractors as Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), with
more than 1,000 visa applications, and Lockheed Martin, with about a
quarter of that number, and by many other contractors.

Hiring holders of H-1B visas tends to permanently displace American
scientists, engineers and programmers. The specialized knowledge of
sophisticated space systems is lost when these jobs are cut.

When the post-mortem is complete, it is likely that a systemic problem
will be revealed, similar to Lockheed Martin's erroneous transmission
of nonmetric units of force to NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
September 1999 that resulted in the Mars polar orbiter burning up while
entering the Mars atmosphere.

Please use the free citizen-activism tools at www.NumbersUSA.com to
press for reform before the next space disaster.

Gene Nelson, Carrollton

Yup, here comes the next NASA disaster.

This is absolutely disgusting since many of the hirees under the H-1B visa programs are underqualified for the positions they will fill.