The hiring blitz comes as good news at KSC, where the NASA work force was slashed from 2,498 people in 1993 to 1,687 last year a drop in excess of 30 percent.

"I think morale is noticeably up several notches," KSC Director Roy Bridges told SPACE.com.

"We were perhaps being somewhat overworked in this particular [downsizing] environment. So I think the stress levels will go down because people have hope that there is going to be help on the way," the former astronaut said.

"People here at Kennedy have a great passion for the mission, so this wasnt a question of people not doing the job," he added. "Its just that now they understand there is going to be some cavalry coming over the hill."

Amid soaring federal deficits and dwindling budgets, NASA in 1993 set out to significantly reduce its nationwide civil service work force, which has been cut to about 18,500 people from 25,700 at the time.

"We were perhaps being somewhat overworked in this particular (downsizing) environment."

Bearing much of the brunt of the cutbacks were NASAs so-called "Piloted Spaceflight Centers" Kennedy, Johnson, Marshall and Stennis each of which plays key roles in the space shuttle or space station programs.

The move to shore up engineering and quality control staff at the four field centers signals a major reversal in NASAs downsizing plan.

At KSC, the agency had planned to scale back its federal payroll to 1,422 by the year 2008. But now the plan is to hire an additional 158 engineers and quality inspectors this year. Doing so will bring the federal payroll back up to about 1,800 people at KSC a level expected to remain stable.

The new jobs at KSC which will pay between $26,000 and $92,000 - "will primarily be critical skill hires to replace people we lost in the downsizing over the last couple of years," Bridges said.

Those job cuts "left us a little bit too shallow in some of our engineering talent," he said.

The inability to fill resulting gaps in critical skills areas, meanwhile, "was putting us very close to the edge," Bridges said.

"In a lot of cases, we were just one [person] deep in a particular skill, and you know, once you get to one deep, the next time somebody gets sick or walks out the door we would be in trouble."

The fact that NASA has flown shuttles safely with a drastically reduced agency work force primarily is due to a low flight rate over the past couple of years, Bridges said.

Last year, for example, NASA launched just three space shuttle missions its lowest flight rate since 1988 due to delays in the construction of the International Space Station.

With station construction delays continuing, NASA might launch just three to five shuttle missions this year. But once the project is jump-started, NASA will face a shuttle flight schedule that calls for seven or eight flights per annum.

Thats why NASA is moving now to re-build its engineering and quality control staff at the four field centers.

At KSC, the agency will hire 133 engineers to work on shuttle launch operations, shuttle safety upgrades, integrated testing of International Space Station components and management of the agencys Expendable Launch Vehicle directorate.

Another 25 quality control specialists will be brought on to help oversee the 8,500 inspections performed on shuttles before every flight.

At Johnson, Marshall and Stennis, the numbers of engineers to be hired this year are 176, 194 and 23, respectively.

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, meanwhile, on Monday will unveil the agencys fiscal 2001 budget. It is expected to include enough money to make certain downsizing is dead when it comes to shuttle safety jobs.

With the demanding station construction job looming, Bridges said the timing is just right.

"We are not having a safety problem today with todays launch rate. But we could see some [safety problems] coming," the veteran shuttle pilot said. "And frankly, now were able to have a lot more confidence that weve got all our critical jobs covered."