Congress, NASA, Other

All about jobs

With NASA transitioning into the post-shuttle era, and doing so in a turbulent economy, it’s no surprise that there’s concern about jobs and job losses, and not just in Houston or Florida’s Space Coast. Up to 600 jobs in Huntsville could be eliminated in the next two months, the Huntsville Times reported late last week, based on Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notices sent to contractors at the beginning of this month. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), whose district includes Huntsville, used the potential layoffs to criticize the administration: “We still have a White House that is hostile to NASA’s traditional manned spaceflight role,” he claimed. At a town hall meeting over the weekend, he reiterated that he and fellow members of the state’s congressional delegation were “frustrated” with the NASA, and did not sound confident about the agency’s budget for 2012: “I would love to be optimistic (about money for NASA) but having dealt with this White House and this Congress, I don’t know,” he said.

Concern about NASA-related jobs is not limited to Alabama Republicans, though. After a meeting with Lockheed Martin officials on Friday, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) said he and the rest of his state’s delegation supported continued funding for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) program, on which Lockheed is the prime contractor. The company “is one of our most important employers,” he told the Denver Post, and it “is showing the world the Orion capsule. It’s what America represents.”

Meanwhile, an op-ed writer for the Orlando Sentinel suggests that NASA’s mission be focused on technology development and job creation, with no mention of a specific exploration mission or destination. Chuck O’Neal envisions a president address that calls on NASA “to create as many new technologies and new innovations as is necessary to employ every able-bodied person in this country.” Well, good luck with that.

41 comments to All about jobs

  • Mark Whittington

    Chuck O’Neal’s proposal fits very well for Obama’s NASA. Don’t do anything.

  • Come off it Whittington, O’Neal’s proposal is wishful thinking on his part and has nothing to do with the new plan. But then you know that already. Take two propaganda pills and call the doctor in the morning.

  • Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), whose district includes Huntsville, used the potential layoffs to criticize the administration: “We still have a White House that is hostile to NASA’s traditional manned spaceflight role,” he claimed.

    I guess he missed the part where his colleagues in Congress enacted the FY 11 budget that implemented this supposed “hostility.”

  • Vladislaw

    ““We still have a White House that is hostile to NASA’s traditional manned spaceflight role,” “

    No, more like hostile to NASA’s traditional cost overruns, schedules that are never met and spending billions on programs with no results until they are canceled.

  • amightywind

    There won’t be another Presidential NASA address. The NASA malaise is a strong negative for Obama. Where will he give the address, in front of the weeded desolation of the now abandoned Cape facilities, or the unemployment office in Orlando?

    Well, good luck with that.

    There is hope for you.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Let’s get this straight. Most of NASA’s budget is expended on salaries. So to the extent that NASA’s budget is level, the number of “space” jobs remains level. To the extent that NASA’s human space flight budget remains level, the number of human space flight jobs remains level. However do you translate that into hostility to human space flight?
    I suppose you might translate local job losses into hostility to certain congressional districts, but that’s another matter.

    What we’re talking about here are job losses in particular venues. KSC, JSC, , MSFC and perhaps even Lockheed Denver. Those job losses have to be offset by space job gains in other places. These jobs are being lost because the experience base they represent doesn’t serve contemporary needs for human space flight, or doesn’t conform to procurement decisions that try to serve those needs.

    Local legislators have every right to get upset about jobs getting taken out of their districts, but that’s not space policy, it’s labor relations.

  • Rhyolite

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 10:46 am

    Precisely. The debate is over where the jobs go and whether they are productive ones, not over the total quantity.

  • N.A.

    The jobs are just moving huh. Well, there have been thousands of space related positions cut from the program as of late. Take a look at any of the space industry sites and tell me if you find as many space related jobs anywhere else in the country. A hundred in Hawthorne, fifty in Dullas, a hundred in Boulder, etc. These numbers DO NOT add up to the total number of jobs lost. Where is the money going????

  • Das Boese

    it “is showing the world the Orion capsule. It’s what America represents.”

    And the world is not impressed.

    Orion is to spaceflight what Harley-Davidson is to the motorcycle industry.

  • common sense

    @ N.A. wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 1:17 pm

    “Where is the money going????”

    Paying our debt. Have you followed the news lately?

  • Doug Lassiter

    N.A. wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
    “These numbers DO NOT add up to the total number of jobs lost. Where is the money going????”

    Commercial is expanding rapidly, at a number of venues. It is true that contract closeout costs for Constellation and Shuttle aren’t going to the front line, but to industry management. It would be nice to see some kind of an assessment from NASA about this. I suspect the dollars aren’t getting thrown into a deep pit or stuffed under mattresses.

  • SpaceX alone has hired over 1,000 people in around 2 years in Florida, Texas, Virginia, and California.

    Virgin Galactic, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin, Space Florida, and Orbital Sciences have hired thousands of workers in Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and elsewhere in the last 3 years as they spend billions of dollars in COTS, CCDEV, and private commercial money to advance commercial human spaceflight. KSC in Florida is spending NASA money upgrading its infrastructure and Aerojet proposed over 1,000 new jobs to manufacture liquid rocket engines in Alabama for the NASA SLS rocket.

    There are thousands of new jobs attached to the new NASA policy.

  • common sense

    @ Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    There will not be a 1-to-1 job offer for every loss. This is not the point. Close outs do not pay the workforce as you pointed.

    Was the workforce getting out and look for a job since 2004/2005? Or did they wait expectantly they would be bailed out too?

    In any case, I don’t think that contracting with NASA would ensure life employment. So what do we do now?

  • amightywind

    Was the workforce getting out and look for a job since 2004/2005?

    No, because we had a robust program that reused the same facilities and workforce, a shuttle program ‘on steroids’, if you will. The expectation was that the jobs would remain in some form. The trap door fell on the Cape in February 2010, shortly after the successful flight of Ares I-X.

  • N.A.

    “Paying our debt. Have you followed the news lately?”

    WRONG. The NASA budget has not been cut by an amount that would make a dent in out debt. The budget has been relatively stable (within 20%) each year. So the money is not going to the debt.

    “There are thousands of new jobs attached to the new NASA policy.”

    But the money is being spent NOW! This years budget is spent this year, not next year, not when the commercial companies decide it’s time to start hiring. Where is the money going?

    “Virgin Galactic, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin, Space Florida, and Orbital Sciences have hired thousands of workers in Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and elsewhere in the last 3 years ……”

    Thousands…..REALLY; come on. Boeing is laying off people. Sierra Navada is hiring, but it is around 30 positions in Colorado. Blue Origin has roughly 20 open positions. VG has a few opeinings. Granted, Orbital is hiring, but for many programs; not for the COTS or CCDEV programs. The same story has been true for the “last three years”.

  • common sense

    @ amightywind wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    “No, because we had a robust program that reused the same facilities and workforce, a shuttle program ‘on steroids’, if you will. ”

    No we did not.

    “The expectation was that the jobs would remain in some form.”

    Had you been in this business you’d know that the original plan after the VSE was to reduce the workforce. The Bush WH plan that is. Not to keep it. Whether you or I like it or not that was the plan.

    “The trap door fell on the Cape in February 2010, shortly after the successful flight of Ares I-X.”

    There was no trap. The program was falling behind and getting crazy cost overruns. Ares-I-X was not “successful” only partially successful, whether, again, you like it or not.

  • common sense

    @ N.A. wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 4:41 pm

    “WRONG. The NASA budget has not been cut by an amount that would make a dent in out debt. The budget has been relatively stable (within 20%) each year. So the money is not going to the debt.”

    Of course I am wrong and as soon as you see the money coming to you you let us all know.

    Now instead of asking the web you may want to ask your reps in Congress since they are those who sign the check. FWIW.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Re the Sentinel Op-Ed advocating investment in technology as the best way to create jobs, that’s what the administration (via OCT) is trying to do. But technology money is low hanging fruit for more important matters to Congress, like an SLS. So credible NASA investment in technology that could shape the future of space exploration is toast, it seems. In this context, it sure is interesting about the new report in Reuters about how Russia wants to redirect much of their human space flight funding to technology development. A Russian “flexible path” maybe? Seems that the Russians don’t figure themselves in a race back to the Moon with the Chinese.

    As to jobs and the whereabouts of NASA job money, aside from Constellation closeout it’s pretty easy to see where the big FY11 budget plus-ups are that offset the decline in shuttle and Constellation. Commercial Crew, Commercial Cargo, 21st Century Launch Complex, Exploration R&D, and ISS Ops. Plenty of new jobs in the first two have been cited, and these are for cutting edge technology and engineering. The third is, to a large degree, about civil engineering and construction. The fourth is for jobs that may be well away from the Space Coast that have little relevance to shuttle support. The last might offer some crossover to shuttle workers. So if you’re looking for NASA job opportunities that a dedicated shuttle servant could jump right into, that doesn’t involve driving bulldozers, no question that there aren’t that many.

  • Thousands of new jobs have been created due to changes in NASA policy concerning commercial human spaceflight.

    NASA COTS, CRS, CCDEV-1, and CCDEV-2 are NASA programs connected to $10-Billion in spending for commercial human spaceflight through 2016. Most of this money will go to new jobs.

    It is true, however, that many thousands of jobs have also been lost on programs like Space Shuttle and Constellation that are winding down. I think most of the debate boils down to who gets the money or job, and whether US Government money should only or mostly go to US Government employees and contractors. The Russians and Chinese do not have this debate, because they mostly think like communists who do not understand the benefits of investing in commercial markets that are not under tight centralized government control.

    SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and others have received over a billion dollars in private commercial investment and commitments from non-NASA customers for commercial spaceflight, and there are probably 1,000 jobs associated with this money.

    You can normally count on 1 job for every $100,000 per year in money spent, so it should not be very hard to track the new jobs associated with NASA’s support of commercial human spaceflight starting with COTS in FY 2007 and with other commercial investments committed from 2007 to 2016. Most of the money spent is going into labor and salaries, so if you assume over $1-Billion per year will be spent on commercial human spaceflight, then you can assume around 10,000 new jobs will be connected to it before it grows.

    There is an argument that 30,000 or more jobs will be lost due to Space Shuttle and Constellation being cancelled, but it is also well known that the reason why Space Shuttle or the Apollo Saturn V rocket cost around $1-Billion per flight was the standing army of 30,000 or so people contracted to operate them. The $3-Billion per year dedicated to a future of 1 or 2 MPCV-Orion/SLS flights per year is probably a jobs program to keep as many as 30,000 people employed. If there is a belief that MPCV/SLS can be replaced by commercial alternatives, then there is a constituency represented by $3-Billion and 30,000 jobs that might fight that belief.

    The politicians at NASA and within Congress are trying to build a new winning political constituency that can receive approval. I would guess that the Southern constituency will combine with Virginia, Colorado, Florida, and California to defeat the Utah constituency and we will see an expensive SLS/MPCV combination that drops the solid rocket boosters from Utah and uses liquid boosters from Virginia, Alabama, Colorado, and California.

  • Alan

    amightywind wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    “Was the workforce getting out and look for a job since 2004/2005?”

    No, because we had a robust program that reused the same facilities and workforce, a shuttle program ‘on steroids’, if you will. The expectation was that the jobs would remain in some form. The trap door fell on the Cape in February 2010, shortly after the successful flight of Ares I-X.

    And if we had stuck with the 2003-2004 CEV plan we would have had a Spiral 1 capable craft flying by now, with Spiral 2 capabilities in 2-3 years more.

    Instead we get a monument to Griffin’s ego from the 2005 ESAS 60-day study which promised flights by 2011.

  • N.A.

    I think I’ll have better luck asking the web than asking a congressional rep.

  • DCSCA

    Anom wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 7:52 pm

    ‘Apollo Saturn V rocket cost around $1-Billion per flight was the standing army of 30,000 or so people contracted to operate them.’

    In fact, per CBS News reporting on the morning of 7/16/69,, the cost of launching Apollo 11- just launching the Apollo/Saturn itself, in 1969 dollars, was $69 million.

  • DCSCA

    common sense wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    Paying our debt. Have you followed the news lately?

    Apparently you haven’t as reports say completely eliminating NASA would pay to operate the U.S. government for: eight days.

  • Monte Davis

    Rep. Brooks will now return to his and his party’s regularly scheduled denunciation of wasteful spending, big government, and self-perpetuating agency budgets.

    Clarity begins at home, except when it doesn’t.

  • vulture4

    “The expectation was that the jobs would remain in some form.”

    Perfectly true. The Shuttle workers all voted for Bush and the end of Shuttle while holding to the illusion that somehow he would provide them with new jobs, though the jobs all went elsewhere to people with no experience. Now that it’s too late, they blame Obama.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 5:07 am

    In fact, per CBS News reporting on the morning of 7/16/69,, the cost of launching Apollo 11- just launching the Apollo/Saturn itself, in 1969 dollars, was $69 million.

    Launching = rolling it out, gassing it up, and lighting the engines.

    What was that, like one weeks worth of work?

  • common sense

    “You can normally count on 1 job for every $100,000 per year in money spent, ”

    I belive the correct ration is for every $200,000/yr

  • common sense

    @ N.A. wrote @ August 17th, 2011 at 9:35 pm

    “I think I’ll have better luck asking the web than asking a congressional rep.”

    Hence your mistake. Who on the web is going to help you?

  • common sense

    @ vulture4 wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 10:51 am

    “The expectation was that the jobs would remain in some form.”

    Perfectly true. The Shuttle workers all voted for Bush and the end of Shuttle while holding to the illusion that somehow he would provide them with new jobs, though the jobs all went elsewhere to people with no experience. Now that it’s too late, they blame Obama.

    —–

    No this is NOT true. The workers may have believed it BUT the expectation from the Bush WH was to shrink the Shuttle workforce. AND the original plan for the VSE was NOT to use any Shuttle Derived hardware. Go look at any Phase 1 document if you can find them. I wish I had a document to support this but I don’t, not at hands anyway.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 11:02 am
    You’d do well to revisit the time line on stacking, rollout and systems check for an Apollo/Saturn system– which was not a hobby rocket. But then, you verify what Cernan says, “They don’t know what they don’t know yet.” Don’tcha.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 2:44 pm

    You’d do well to revisit the time line on stacking, rollout and systems check

    You haven’t provided any information to support your arguments, so why should anyone go look things up for you. YOU go revisit them.

    Of course that’s not surprising, since you never provide any information, you just cry “no” like a petulant two-year old.

  • Doug Lassiter

    DCSCA wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
    “You’d do well to revisit the time line on stacking, rollout and systems check for an Apollo/Saturn system– which was not a hobby rocket.”

    That’s exactly right. It took a long time to prep Saturn V for launch. And that … that, is one big reason why we’re not building or launching Apollo/Saturn anymore. Time = expense. BIG expense. Excellent lesson there. We now know what they didn’t know, I guess.

    To the extent that Newspace can create vehicles for which the launch timeline is short, as SpaceX is promising to do, it will make for quite a revolution in launch ops. We’ll see.

    BTW, $(1969)69M to launch a Saturn V? That makes $(2011)430M! Pricey launch, no?

  • DCSCA

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
    Pricey, yes, but not prohibitive for lunar flights– and roughly equivalent to ‘low balled’ shuttle Earth orbit launch costs which was a key complaint and shuttle program failure as the costs were equivalent to 1960s rocketry. Of course, they did pretty well back then given the schedules pressures. No Saturns failed. The Saturn time lines were about 90 days through 11/12 and given the inflexible laws of celestial mechanics, they couldn’t slip the windows much w/o cycling another month. There’s a good book penned about KSC management and operations which has the time lines mapped out. It was managed well in that period. And, in fact, after 13, and the time between flights began to widen, the prep times adapted accordingly. If memory serves, 16 was rolled back to the VAB for a changeout/repair of a piece of hardware and 17 had a launch hold for a valve/software problem and they did a work around and launched a few hours later in the night. 40 years on, you’d expect NewSpace to buld upon advances in technology and hardware but as you say, it remains to be seen if they can ramp up and get flying. Tick-tock…

  • red

    “Re the Sentinel Op-Ed advocating investment in technology as the best way to create jobs, that’s what the administration (via OCT) is trying to do.”

    It will be interesting to see what comes out of this announcement on Monday:

    NASA Media Telecon To Announce Technology Demonstration Missions

    http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/aug/HQ_M11-171_Tech_Demonstrations.html

    Maybe it has to do with the OCT $10M – $150M mission proposals in the following areas (general, not strictly HSF exploration-specific, space technology):

    * high-bandwidth deep space communication, navigation and timing;
    * orbital debris mitigation or removal systems;
    * advanced in-space propulsion systems; and
    * autonomous rendezvous, docking, close proximity operations and formation flying.

    http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/crosscutting_capability/tech_demos/tdm_solicitations.html

    These will involve cost-sharing of at least 25% by the winners. As a result, if we assume similar numbers of jobs per dollar, regardless of whether the project is a space technology demo, ISS module, SLS, MPCV, robotic science mission, or whatever, these will produce at least 25% more space jobs per NASA dollar than projects like SLS that don’t require cost-sharing.

    After the mission, you can assume that both NASA and the partner organization have plans to use the technology later since they’re both willing to pay for it, whereas with a project like SLS it is only NASA that would be using the development results. Thus again this kind of cost-sharing technology demonstration mission can be expected to result in more jobs per NASA dollar in the long run than the SLS type of spending.

    A similar argument can be made for other cost-sharing efforts like COTS and CCDEV likely resulting in more jobs per NASA dollar, for similar reasons. Therefore, if creating jobs is what we’re interested in, this sort of approach has a lot of advantages.

    The SLS approach only creates lots of jobs because of the massive amount of spending for that 1 project. Multiple smaller cost-sharing efforts with a combined NASA budget similar to the SLS budget will create many more jobs than SLS.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    It’s well documented and easy for you to source. Sort ofl ike the significance of Apollo 8. Oh, BTW… tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 11:56 pm

    It’s well documented and easy for you to source.

    If it were so easy you would provide something, anything, that even remotely supports your claims. But as usual, you are just empty rhetoric.

    Sort ofl ike the significance of Apollo 8.

    I asked a local teen what he thought of the significance of Apollo 8. He asked if they were a musical group like Maroon 5. Case closed.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ August 19th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
    Why would you souce local teens on HSF or history of any kind. Might be time for you to move. Suggest you source KSC docs on time lines for Apollo/Saturn hardware and systems integration in the VAB and on the pad pre-launch. It’s pretty easy to source.

  • DCSCA

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 18th, 2011 at 6:01 pm

    To the extent that Newspace can create vehicles for which the launch timeline is short, as SpaceX is promising to do, it will make for quite a revolution in launch ops. We’ll see.

    BTW, trying to draw an analogy between launch ops procedures of an Apollo/Saturn V to the tinkering by SpaceX is a vast and false comparison. Maybe an Atlas, and they required about 3,000 people circa 1962 to get one off the pad… five decades ago.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ August 21st, 2011 at 4:03 am

    Why would you souce local teens on HSF or history of any kind.

    Today’s teen is tomorrows aerospace worker. And since you want to mandate every worker be aware of Apollo history, then I guess that teen will not get the job.

    And it’s not the schools fault for not impressing the importance of Apollo history, it just goes to show the lack of relevance that Apollo has in today’s world. Someone went somewhere new and survived – happens all the time.

    Suggest you source KSC docs

    I could care less about Apollo docs, as they don’t have any bearing on today’s reality, and are completely unrelated to anything I do for work. Space is not my vocation, but my personal interest. That’s why the fortunes of NASA contractors don’t matter to me, only the end result of all the spending (i.e. are we doing things in space).

    Your being an amateur Apollo historian is quaint, but reinforces the perception that you are disconnected from today’s realities. Case in point, your belief that if something wasn’t done 30-50 years ago that it will never happen. Uh huh. Sure.

    You need to get out and mix with the human race a little more…

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ August 21st, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    “Today’s teen is tomorrows aerospace worker.” Not in this economy, fella. “You need to get out and mix with the human race a little more…” indeed, you do, and see what career paths teens with potential are looking at- and it isn’t aerospace, fella.

    “I could care less about Apollo docs…” We know. It shows.

  • Chuck O'Neal

    Glad to see some of you agree in part with my op-ed piece. The thrust of the piece was to draw an analogy between what Xerox did with the Palo Alto Research Center in the early seventies with what could be accomplished by a concerted effort to develop new technologies using the collective genius of NASA.

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