WASHINGTON —
Several thousand NASA contractors in Florida and Louisiana could be out of work
once the space shuttle flies its last mission in 2010, the head of the U.S.
space agency told a Senate panel Feb. 27.
NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin said Florida's Kennedy Space Center stands to lose
"several thousand" contractor jobs following the space shuttle's
retirement from service. While some of those jobs will return as NASA begins
flying the space
shuttle's successor — the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares 1
rocket — the new system, by design, is expected to require fewer people to
operate than the labor-intensive space shuttle.
Orion and
Ares are not expected to begin operations until early 2015, although flight
tests out of the Kennedy could begin a few
years earlier.
The space
shuttle program employs roughly 14,000 people at Kennedy Space Center in
Florida. Griffin said Kennedy would need to take on new roles and
responsibilities beyond launch operations if it wants to maintain it current
workforce levels post-shuttle.
NASA's
Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans also is expected to be hard hit by the
shuttle's looming retirement. The contractor-operated facility produces
external fuel tanks for the shuttle. As tank work winds down in the years just
ahead, NASA employment "will drop from about 1,900 today to under 600,
somewhere down around 500 for a time before coming back up," Griffin told
the Senate Commerce space and aeronautics and related sciences subcommittee
during a hearing on NASA's 2009
budget request.
NASA and
its contractors plan to use Michoud to produce parts of Orion and Ares, but
that production activity is expected to remain fairly limited until the new
system begins making regular flights.
Griffin's
numbers did not sit well with Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla) and David Vitter
(R-La.), the two lawmakers presiding over the hearing. Nelson is the
subcommittee's chairman and Vitter is the subcommittee's ranking Republican.
Nelson
asked Griffin whether Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville also stand to lose jobs once the shuttle retires.
"Will
other centers feel the pain? How about Johnson? How about Marshall?"
Nelson asked.
"Broadly
speaking I don't think we are going to have significant overall workforce
reductions at [Johnson Space Center] or Marshall," Griffin said.
Johnson is
NASA's lead center for the Constellation Program, which encompasses Orion, Ares
and the other systems needed to send
astronauts to the Moon. Marshall, meanwhile, has lead responsibility for
designing Ares.
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