The Lifeboat, the Fire, the Legend

Notes from a Space Explorer Adrift in a Storm

Introduction

In one year, I lost my career, watched my city burn, nearly lost my wife, and buried a legend. But I’m still here. Still writing. Still holding the wrench. Let’s begin.

Chapter: Walk The Plank Mate

In Knowledge Management, we are taught not to bury the truth, but to surface it—especially when it’s hard. Lessons are not meant to comfort. They are meant to illuminate.

So here is mine.

AI slop image of what Charles White feels is happening

In February of 2024, after 37 years of service, I was laid off by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A place I did not just work, but lived—a cathedral of exploration where I poured in decades of thought, sweat, care, and curiosity. For me, JPL was not a job. It was the ship of dreams.

Fortunately, the math was kind. Right age, right investments, and the silent click of eligibility opened the escape hatch. I could honorably retire. And so in April 2024, I did. I slipped away in my solo lifeboat, quietly drifting from the vessel I loved, while behind me rose a chorus of farewells and the stunned faces of comrades still aboard, concerned about their fate.

At first, I didn’t need my Social Security earned retirement benefits. I could let them steep in time’s patient hands and increase. But then came the November 2024 election, and like spotting storm clouds on a once-clear horizon, I adjusted course. Out of caution, I activated the system in February 2025.

And I made it.

Through that cyclone of chaotic budget cuts and institutional carnage, I reached the other side. And in April of 2025, I marked one year in retirement. Something strange happened then. The last neural fingerprints of daily toil, the muscle memory of engineering chaos, the silent cadence of badge-swipes and cleanroom sign-offs—they all faded. Like static dissolving from a signal, I was clear.

Now I write. I reflect. I document the strange and sacred history of my time as a space explorer. I think about black holes. I publish. Sometimes I make a video. I am, for the first time in decades, undivided.

But the sea ahead is not calm.

If my lifeboat made it through, I did not leave triumphantly. I left with gravity in my bones. Because when I look back—when I call out to those still on the JPL ship—I see not smooth sailing, but fire in the rigging.

I was 1 of 530 laid off in that first tranche, but more were to follow, up to a 1,000. And now, in summer of 2025 NASA is being hit with major cuts to its hull. Over 1,640+ people have accepted voluntary evacuation. And still, the bleeding hasn’t stopped.

Major space missions are being terminated (interestingly Earth Observation missions). Curiosity is no longer a virtue, but a liability. Science is on the back steps, not a priority, and national ignorance reigns in a new idiocracy. And worse, idiots are in charge. I've been told that I'm the one that is deranged, that everything is going to be great again, but I know the scent of gaslighting when it burns in the air, because the very things that made us good are being dismantled before our very eyes, and we are told not to trust our eyes. To look away from the flame and pretend it’s sunlight.

But I do look. I call back.

NASA is weathering a storm not of natural forces, but of deliberate political design—one that has gutted its budget, terminated multiple flagship missions, and triggered the largest exodus of talent since the agency’s founding. The loss isn’t just institutional, it’s personal.

In 2024, over 1,000+ of my colleagues at JPL were laid off, many of them brilliant minds with nowhere to redirect their trajectories. An additional 1,640+ NASA employees accepted buyouts, and projections estimate that as many as 5,000 more will be gone by October 1, 2025. Lifeboats are few, and some are already ablaze. Historic missions—lunar rovers, deep-space telescopes, nuclear propulsion projects—have been scuttled mid-development, wasting over $10 billion in momentum and extinguishing the hopes they carried. For those of us who gave our lives to this pursuit, senior engineers, mission leaders, and knowledge carriers are disappearing into early retirement or uncertainty. For those of us who built careers on wonder and precision, this isn’t just a restructuring—it’s a slow-motion implosion. The ship’s decks are listing, and the stars we once chased are now dim behind rigging smoke.

I speak over the open radio channels to my friends still on board that NASA ship. They can’t leave. Not yet. Not now. There are no lifeboats left for them. Mortgages. School-aged kids. Loyalty. Fear. And the harsh calculus of knowing the world outside the hull is shrinking. The aerospace ships are fewer now. Smaller. Already crowded with survivors of this storm.

And you might think this tale has reached its climax. A seafarer, cut adrift. A great ship gutted. A storm bearing down. But then… add fire.

In January 2025, not a forest fire, not a wilderness blaze, but a city fire—a catastrophe echoing Chicago 1871 and Lahaina 2023—swept through the hills beside JPL. It was as if the cosmos had conspired to write a metaphor too cruelly literal.

And this is only the beginning.

Chapter: Add Fire to Insult

Then came the fire.

The Altadena City Fire—originally named the Eaton Fire—did not simply pass through. It stayed. Twenty-four days. That’s not a fire, that’s an occupation. A siege of flame. And when it left, it didn’t just char the earth, it erased pieces of our collective memory.

Charles White scans a home across from Charles White County Park in Altadena

Photo Caption: Charles White looking at a home destroyed in Altadena.

Gone: The community hall at Charles White county park (the artist, not me).

Gone: The Andrew McNally House, where maps of the world were once printed and the stars still whispered over domes and dinner tables.

Gone: The Zane Grey Estate, once home to western mythologies now swallowed by a firestorm worthy of his novels.

Gone: The Bunny Museum, Altadena Community Church, St. Mark’s Episcopal, Scripps Hall—these weren’t just addresses, they were story anchors. Places you pointed to and said, “That’s part of where I’m from.”

And interwoven with the ashes were the lives of JPLers—current explorers, retired navigators. Some still aboard the NASA ship. Others already in their lifeboats, retired and uncounted. The fire did not care. It swallowed tenure, trophies, time, pins. It did not distinguish between badge numbers or titles. The cosmos does not play favorites, and apparently neither does flame.

In January as the flames were simmering in the city, and in my mind, I wrote this linked in article, you can read it later but here it is: We Are Stupid and We Will Burn

Photo Caption: A sign on her car counting the moves since the Eaton Fire

Among the survivors was one close to me. A friend. A shipmate from Burning Man. She didn’t own her home. She rented. And that changes everything.

There is a quiet cruelty in our systems: when the fire comes, a homeowner might lose everything, but at least the world acknowledges it. Insurance, and FEMA (another sinking ship) only goes so far. But if you're a renter, your loss is quieter. Smaller in the eyes of the system. There’s no payout for the years you made that place your sanctuary.

She had no lifeboat. So she swam.

And when she reached my boat, I pulled her in. A few weeks aboard, a few more in other vessels among our constellation of friends in Los Angeles. Always moving. Never drifting. Her resolve was iron. She didn’t ask for sympathy, she asked for time.

Photo Caption: A small lifepod trailer, but at least a sanctuary for now.

I gave her a trailer. A tiny pod of possibility. She got a bigger car just to pull it. She’s still moving. Still making her survival happen. She accepts hugs, but has no time to linger in them.

She is one of the reasons I believe in humanity. Because while systems failed her, people did not. Not all of us.

Others weren’t as lucky.

Some of my colleagues, too, had been laid off. Their lifeboats caught fire—literally. Imagine that. You’re cast out from your life's work, you scrape together your escape, and then flame finds you anyway. They’re angry now. Some blame California. Some blame the nation. Some blame everything. And I don't fault them for that. Anger is easier to hold than grief. Especially when grief comes without ceremony or closure.

Some are trying to leave. Sell what’s left, and find a new port. I understand the impulse. But I worry for them. Because the sea is wide, and those bluer waters they seek may just be painted illusions, rippling in mirage. You can’t always run from a storm that’s planetary.

Some of us have no choice but to stay. Some of us choose to.

I stay because someone needs to say it. To write it. To name what happened, while others try to pretend it didn’t.

I am not trying to be poetic when I say: this was not just a fire. This was a burn mark in the timeline of our city.

And I’m not done writing it yet.

Chapter: Landfall Isn’t Peace

I’ve made landfall now. But don’t mistake that for calm. I’m no longer adrift, true, but neither have I found routine. My 4x4 Tacoma waits in the driveway like an old horse that knows the trail. It stares at me with steel and dust, eager to gallop toward the high deserts I love. But the crisis has grounded me. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Photo Caption: Susan in the ER at Huntington

My wife, Susan, spent a week in The Huntington—yes, that very hospital beneath the smoke-plumed ridgeline of the Altadena Fire. Heart failure. Pneumonia. The kinds of words you don’t want to hear next to the name of someone who holds your world together.

She’s home now. Recovering. But it’s slow. The oxygen machine they sent her home with pulses in our living room like a steam train from another century. Two-pronged piston sound with tubes that hiss with every breath. Choo-Chuff. Choo-Chuff. Choo-Chuff. Each beat a reminder that life is breath, and breath is precious. I listen to its rhythm while I measure time in medication alarms, blood pressure tests, pulse oximeters and whispered reassurances.

Photo Caption: Snowball, our Black American Longhair 24 lb Cat

And as if that weren’t enough, our black-furred feline overlord, Snowball, decided to audition for the ICU right behind her. Two days in Cat Hospital. Pancreatitis. Dignified but surly, he returned home with a bill so astronomical it could qualify for orbital insertion.

I want out of here NOW!

Medicare doesn’t cover cats, apparently. Snowball’s stay cost many times more out of pocket than Susan’s. I’ve double-checked the math. It’s not funny, but somehow, it is.

And yet, we endure.

Because I’m not out of the woods either. I walk this new terrain with a heart that sometimes skips to its own irregular beat—Afib, they call it—and an enlarged prostate that has decided to make itself known with all the subtlety of a marching band in a monastery.

And here’s where I violate the man-code.

We’re supposed to hide this stuff, right? Whisper it in hushed tones, or not at all. But that’s not what Knowledge Management is about. That’s not what lessons learned are for. So I’m going to say it out loud: more men die of prostate and testicular cancer than you’d think. (Yes, I checked: while breast cancer is more prevalent, prostate cancer deaths are comparable, and testicular cancer, though rarer, strikes young and often silently.) But we men don’t talk about it. Because of shame. Because of pride. Because of that absurd internal programming that says we’re only real men if we walk it off.

But I won’t walk this one off. I’ll talk it out.

Lesson: Your body doesn’t care about your man-code. And neither should you.

This isn’t just my lifeboat anymore. It’s a little infirmary now. A writer’s den. A cat sanctuary. A medical supply depot. A waiting room. A prayer wheel that turns in the form of old friends texting, “How are you holding up?”

I’m holding. Just not still.

Chapter: The Passing Mentor of Stars

And through all of this—the fire, the illness, the storm—came the another blow that bent the mast: one of my great mentors passed.

Photo Caption: John Casani and Charles White smile for the camera.

We had lunch back in March 2025. One of those lingering, memory-laced conversations where old spacecraft stories brush up against current chaos. He was sharp, of course. Always was. But on June 2025, he crossed over at 92. Not into darkness, but into the history books. Into the constellations of remembered giants.

John R. Casani.

That name doesn’t echo in ordinary halls. That is a name carved into the bedrock of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was not just a sailor of the stars—he helped chart the course. One of the most respected spacecraft engineers and mission managers of the 20th century. He didn’t walk among legends. He was one.

John joined JPL in 1956. Before Mariner flew, before Voyager soared, before Galileo’s descent and Cassini’s dance. He wasn’t watching history. He made it. From systems engineer to project manager to senior advisor to the director, he was a spine in the backbone of exploration.

But he wasn’t just important to the record books. He was important to me.

He mentored with clarity. With force. With relentless honesty. And with one of the greatest gifts a leader can give: expectations that lifted you rather than crushed you. John demanded your best—but if you showed up with it, he had your back.

He taught me three things—three phrases every engineer should keep in their toolbelt, sharper than any wrench:

1. “I don’t know.”

2. “I was wrong.”

3. “I can fix it.”

These weren’t slogans. They were survival protocols. They were invitations to grow and permission to shed the armor of ego. Number 1, “I don’t know,” was foundational to my own career. And it’s still rare in rooms filled with people who would rather pretend than pause. A BIG MISTAKE at JPL.

John could be blunt. Razor-sharp in meetings, ruthless with sloppy logic or weak evidence. His bullshit detector was strong with The Force. But then—after the heat—he’d invite you for a beer. He’d talk spacecraft and systems like an old friend around a campfire. That balance of rigor and warmth made him rare. Human. Trusted.

I reported to him on several special assignments. Once, I had to challenge him—me, still rising. I knew the only way to survive was with data, and I brought it. He respected that. From that moment on, he'd occasionally ask my thoughts on contemporary lab matters. Quiet invitations. Private nods. Every time, I recognized the honor. I’m still honored after his passing.

Photo Caption: Legends mourn a legend at Athenaeum’s patio

This week, I attended his memorial at the Caltech Athenaeum. Over 320 of us gathered. Engineers. Leaders. Family. His brother was there. His five sons gave eulogies that pierced the heart. JPL Director Dave Gallagher and Richard Cook gave the official remembrances. One line stood out: “The word ‘legend’ is overused—but not in his case.”

They were right. But I noticed something else too.

As I scanned the patio—row after row of brilliant, silver-haired minds—I saw something different than at past gatherings. There was a shared look in the eyes. A haunted silence between conversations. The quiet knowledge that their ship is taking on water. Some of us are in lifeboats. Some are clinging to the rails. Some have made it to shore, like me. But the ship’s rigging is still on fire.

And yet… being me… I couldn't help myself.

I found a moment in the hallway and pulled aside the Director. Not to mourn. To work.

I brought him a Knowledge Management issue I knew he hadn’t seen yet. A gap. A vulnerability. A flaw in the system John once helped build. And he listened. He nodded. He said he’d act. I will follow up.

So maybe I’m still working, in a way.

Because in this strange new age of smoke and silence, the real lesson John taught me is this: when the ship is on fire, don’t just look for a lifeboat.

Look for a wrench.

Epilogue: The Stillness Between Battles

To those still aboard those NASA ships: I see you. I hear the creaking of your decks and the silent calculations behind your eyes. You are holding the line—not because it’s easy, but because you remember why we ever launched in the first place. You walk past the plaques, the mission posters, the quiet offices that used to hum with purpose. And still, you work. Still, you solve. Still, you carry forward the dignity of spaceflight. I cannot throw you a lifeline, but I can bear witness. And I can tell you this: the stars have not abandoned you. Even if leadership falters, even if the hull groans, your work remains noble. Protect each other. Speak truth. And when the time comes—whether it’s your turn to jump, to stay, pushed, or to rebuild—you will know. Just don’t let the silence take the signal from you. This is my signal.

For me… as I sail on… the deserts are calling again.

Their silence is different than the silence of loss. Out there, the wind doesn’t mourn. It doesn’t explain. It just is. And in that vastness, I am not a victim of layoffs or fire or failing systems. I am an explorer again. Even grounded, the dust remembers my footprints.

Photo Caption: Charles White as Bonsai Artist at The Huntington Library & Gardens.

The bonsai trees wait too. Quiet sentinels of time. They grow slowly, deliberately, ignoring the chaos of the world beyond their shallow pots. I’ve learned from them—how to prune away what no longer serves. How to shape the future with patient hands. They remind me that resilience is not loud. Sometimes, it just waits.

AI predicted image of Charles White playing Luthen Rael at Wasteland Weekend

Ahead lies Wasteland Weekend. A world of dust and diesel, of myth made manifest. And there, I will become Luthen Rael—not just in costume, but in conviction. A man who has sacrificed comfort for cause. A man who walks in the shadows to speak hard truths to those who still dream.

Like him, I’ve traded calm for clarity. I’ve bartered pieces of myself for the chance to shake the slumbering. As Luthen once said, “I burn my life to make a sunrise I know I’ll never see.” I know that feeling. I’ve lived it. In spacecraft reviews. In knowledge battles. In long nights writing lessons learned no one wanted to read—until they needed them.

My spirit is not broken. But my world… conspires.

Yet I remain. A desert walker. A tree shaper. A truth-teller.

I still have my voice. I still have my mind. I still have my wrench.

Photo Caption: Charles Tacoma ready for the next desert hill to climb

And in the silence after the chuff of the oxygen machine, or the purr of a recovering cat, or the last light of a fading fire, I whisper to myself:

“There the deserts are still waiting for me.”

-Charles White, Space Explorer and Galactic Antiques Dealer

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Link to the LinkedIn Article… We Are Stupid and We Will Burn

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