NASA Hires Prisoners to Build Satellites!

San Quentin Prisoners Team Up With NASA

Working under the strict guidance of NASA, Ariel and a handful of other skilled inmate machinists are making something most people have never heard of: P-PODs, Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployers, essentially, aluminum boxes designed to hold tiny satellites known as CubeSats, which ride “piggyback” into space as secondary payloads. The devices are part of a new generation of low-cost, miniature launch vehicles developed for research used by more than 150 universities worldwide.

Out of a general population of more than 3,800 prisoners, machine shop instructor Richard Saenz has accepted just 27 men in his vocational education program; only five on the highly technical NASA project. A veteran government contractor on such aerospace projects as the space shuttle and the ICBM missile, Saenz is a stickler for precision. And he calls this job, training inmates to become skilled machinists, the best he has ever had.

That's right! "the best he has ever had!"

They are, most likely, the only prisoners on Earth helping to develop products for space exploration.

...they study chemistry, calculus, and trigonometry...

San Quentin Prisoners Team Up With NASA!

So I have more chance working for NASA by becoming a Felon then by paying $$$$$ for a University Education while having a Job

I heard this program is hard to get into in San Quentin. Most of the applicants used to work in the prison bio-engineering lab, but they had to close it down after all the contraband sales of anthrax that were being traded for Marlboros...

Thirty five cents to eighty five cents an hour wages, wow.

reply to post by Cosmic911


I don't know how this fits in fairness wise, but taking steps towards turning our prison system into an actual rehabilitation system is a welcome change. Good, valuable people make mistakes. Now to those who are offended that inmates are receiving the skills and education unavailable to themselves and their children, I have no response but to say that I completely understand.

It's better than what NASA did before: use corpses or homeless people in crash tests.

Originally posted by wildespace
It's better than what NASA did before: use corpses or homeless people in crash tests.

You're mad at NASA for giving those people a home? (At 700mph.) Shame on you.

reply to post by wildespace

use corpses or homeless people in crash tests.

Seems creepy at first but it does have a positive side.
You have been wanting NASA to cut costs haven't you? I expect cadavers are much cheaper than the 100K for CT dummies.

It make me wonder. Did the cadavers have names like dummy 1 or Bob? Were thay suited up?
Still a little creepy.

reply to post by hezro


This is not turning prisons into rehabilitation centers, it's the new Chinese slave labour market, in North America!
Not a good idea at all, an incentive to keep jails full.
If you put more and more people in prison, you have more and more cheap labour and they (prisoners) want to do it simply because it's less boring than sitting in a jail cell.
These prisons are usually private, for profit prisons too, they lobby politicians, to increase sentence time, be stingy with parole, to enact or preserve stupid laws (ie: keeping marijuana illegal) to keep the jails full.

So before you go on thinking this is a swell idea, think about where this is going, America with the worlds largest prison population already, set to grow due to capitalism.
The good news is, THE JOBS WILL COME BACK! The bad news is they will be done by an army of prison slaves instead of Chinese sweatshop labourers.
So, if you want a job in the future and a roof over your head, go rob a bank and get caught, or grow some plants.

No good can come of this.

Originally posted by BacknTime
So I have more chance working for NASA by becoming a Felon then by paying $$$$$ for a University Education while having a Job

Yes but

Once hired it's 30 to life.