Congress, NASA

Feeney and Weldon send out an SOS

That’s “Save Our Shuttle [Jobs]”, of course. On Tuesday, NASA released a shuttle workforce transition report that includes preliminary estimates predicting up to 9,000 jobs, primarily among contractors, that will be cut over the next three years as the shuttle is retired. The vast majority of those cuts—up to 6,400—will be at KSC, as expected. Some of those cuts may be partially offset after 2011 as Constellation efforts ramp up—assuming Constellation continues in something like its current form in the next administration.

This has fired up the two members of the House whose districts include KSC employees. Rep. Dave Weldon used the report as an argument for his “SPACE Act” legislation (HR 4837) that would authorize funding to continue the space shuttle program after 2010 to eliminate any gap in US government human spaceflight capability, and turned up the rhetoric another notch or two. “This report only confirms what I have been saying for the last several years. The Bush Administration’s space plan is woefully inadequate and unacceptable. The Administration’s current plan is to cede the ‘ultimate high ground’ to hostile nations. The Chinese and Russians are celebrating today, while many on the Space Coast are only now realizing the magnitude of the absurdity of the current strategy imposed by the Administration.”

Rep. Tom Feeney also expressed his concerns about the situation, but while Feeney is a cosponsor of HR 4837, he focused more on other solutions. “After the Shuttle retires, KSC will host important engineering and assembly work supporting lunar exploration. So expanding human spaceflight to the Moon is critical to stabilizing the Kennedy Space Center’s workforce,” he said, adding that “We should devote the resources necessary to rapidly bring the Constellation program online after the Shuttle’s retirement so KSC isn’t as severely impacted as forecast in today’s report.” Feeney did fire a shot in the direction of the presidential candidates: “Any Presidential candidate intent on killing lunar exploration is condemning Florida’s Space Coast to the scenario found in NASA’s initial forecasts.”

In his press release, Weldon complained that “My colleagues in the Senate haven’t seemed to grasp the scope of this debacle and the urgency with which we must act.” Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) issued a brief statement that may not be sufficient to mollify Weldon. “There is no simple fix to this problem, but we know where to focus our efforts, We need to accelerate the Orion and Ares programs, we need to foster a competitive environment for commercial space operations, and we need to assist the individuals and businesses affected by the transition.”

15 comments to Feeney and Weldon send out an SOS

  • Gary Spenser

    “The Chinese and Russians are celebrating today”

    How are the Russians “celebrating”? Their space program remains anemic, and they don’t really have any new plans in space science or human spaceflight. They’re still not spending a lot of money on civilian space.

    China, on the other hand, is doing some new things. But they’re moving so slow that it’s hard to see how come anybody takes them seriously. They fly humans once every 2-3 years.

  • Gary Spenser: China, on the other hand, is doing some new things. But they’re moving so slow that it’s hard to see how come anybody takes them seriously

    Hmm, SpaceX is moving even more slowly, yet somehow we take them seriously. Just a thought.

    It’s academic, since much additional government money for spaceflight is not in the cards, but I like Representative Freeney’s solution a lot more than Representative Weldon’s. The latter is a total waste, and looks to the past, while the former is at least forward-looking.

    — Donald

  • Anon

    Given that Obama has written off the voters in Florida as being less important in this election cycle then those in New Hampshire I suspect he won’t care they are unemployed as well.

  • Al Fansome

    GARY SPENSER: China, on the other hand, is doing some new things. But they’re moving so slow that it’s hard to see how come anybody takes them seriously

    DONALD: Hmm, SpaceX is moving even more slowly, yet somehow we take them seriously. Just a thought.

    Donald,

    Not true. The only measure by which SpaceX is moving slowly is when you compare it to the schedule they originally set.

    From a standing start, SpaceX is planning on launching the Falcon IX in the next year or so — if they say a year it will probably take them 2-3 years, and they probably will have 1-2 failures. So make it 2011/2012 for the initial success on the optimistic side.

    China has had a rocket program for many decades, and plans to launch their new Long March V (which is the equivalent of the Proton or Ariane V or Ares 1) in about 2015.

    This is much much slower than Elon, and even slower than NASA (which plans to have test flights of the Ares 1 well before 2015.)

    – Al

  • It will be tough for the SPACE act to get through, but bringing it into focus could motivate other congressman to authorize more funding for NASA as a consolation to constituents or peers who care about the NASA job cuts.

  • Anon

    From a standing start, SpaceX is planning on launching the Falcon IX in the next year or so — if they say a year it will probably take them 2-3 years, and they probably will have 1-2 failures. So make it 2011/2012 for the initial success on the optimistic side.

    Al – If that is what happens then they will miss their COTS deadlinesm making the program a failure, unless OSC comes through with the Taurus II. That will not be good for the image of New Space.

  • Al, I don’t dispute your logic, but most people here when they talk about how slow China is moving appear to be referring to the launch rate. The argument is that you can’t learn enough, and keep skills in tact, if you only launch one a year or once every other year. SpaceX’s demonstrated launch rate is in this ballpark. I wonder if they would be better off if they bit the bullet, tolerated more failures, and attempted to launch more often.

    However, if launch rate is the measure, China’s human flights and SpaceX’s Falcon flights are comparable, yet appear to be judged by different standards.

    — Donald

  • most people here when they talk about how slow China is moving appear to be referring to the launch rate. The argument is that you can’t learn enough, and keep skills in tact, if you only launch one a year or once every other year. SpaceX’s demonstrated launch rate is in this ballpark.

    SpaceX’s *demonstrated* launch rate is irrelevant. They plan to launch at a high rate once they get through development. China, on the other hand, shows no such plans or tendency. Or ability to afford a high rate with their planned systems.

  • mike shupp

    It’s reasonable to assume the war in Iraq will come to an end, one way or another, in the 2009-2011 period, leading to a tapering off of defense spending. Which is to say another period of aerospace retrenchment, a la the 1970s and 1990s, is ahead of us. NASA’s job losses are probably going to look like the few drops that presaged a deluge a decade hence.

    -ms

  • Robert Horning

    There is a huge difference between the period following the end of the Vietnam War vs. the war in Iraq in terms of its impact upon defense spending and that spending going to space-related missions.

    Where the big ramp-up of military spending has been, in terms of high technology in relation to the Iraq war, has been with the development and implementation of UAV’s and ground robots that are developed for anti-mine/bomb activity. The end of the Iraq war would mean some serious cutbacks in this area of research.

    If anything, the end of the Iraq war would mean that there could be a significant increase in spending toward NASA and other more “civilian” research projects. If you ask most ordinary Americans, particularly those who remember the Apollo program and lived in the 1960’s, they would think that NASA still represents 5%-15% of the federal budget…. as it did in the mid-1960’s. If you hear people complaining about how wasteful NASA is, it is a throwback to this era when perhaps it was wasteful of taxpayer money.

    Mind you, I’m not a huge fan of Ares/Orion (quite the opposite), but compared to perceptions the American public is getting pennies on the dollar for what they think is being spent on public space projects. A president that is serious about spaceflight (especially human spaceflight) could significantly change this around and make a huge difference.

    Other areas of basic research have also suffered during the Iraq War, most notably the fusion reactor (the Polywell system) that Robert Bussard was putting together right before he died. Dr. Bussard explicitly mentioned that the growth of spending toward daily operational costs in Iraq was largely responsible for canceling his project under Navy research authority. This is impacting NASA as well, which is one reason why you see a major postponement of major new projects and why this layoff is happening.

  • […] predicting thousands of job losses at the Kennedy Space Center when the shuttle is retired as another reason to extend the shuttle’s life, a couple of major newspapers in the region have called for a different type of legislative relief. […]

  • me

    “This is impacting NASA as well, which is one reason why you see a major postponement of major new projects and why this layoff is happening.”

    The war is not a reason this. This was going to happen with or without the war

  • Robert Horning: If anything, the end of the Iraq war would mean that there could be a significant increase in spending toward NASA and other more “civilian” research projects.

    Unfortunately, I think this is wishful thinking. With the impending increases in costs associated with aging Americans — costs that no elected government is going to significantly truncate if it wants to get re-elected — the very best NASA could hope for is to retain it’s current budget, and even that would probably take a minor miracle. I hope I’m wrong. . . .

    — Donald

  • […] Feeney and Weldon send out an SOS – Space […]

  • […] but in not nearly as sensitive a location.) Of course, that editorial was published before the news that thousands of KSC jobs would be lost when the shuttle is retired; one wonders if that assessment changed a few minds about the proposed KSC launch […]

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