CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - As Florida's Space Coast, home to Kennedy Space Center, grapples with the potentially devastating impact of thousands of lost jobs brought about by the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010, the state's two U.S. Senators held a special field hearing at Port Canaveral today to highlight the problems the local community and NASA face in the coming years, and options the space agency may be able to undertake to help mitigate the losses.
Senator Bill Nelson (D - Melbourne) chaired the hearing and was the only Senate committee member in attendance, but was joined by Sen. Mel Martinez (R - Orlando) in a show of bipartisan support for an issue that crosses party lines.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin testified first during the 2-hour session. Griffin did have some good news for worried space center workers and citizens, both in terms of job losses and potential future work for the space center.
Contrasting previous worst-case estimates of up to 6,400 job losses post-shuttle, Griffin said the number will actually be between 3,000 and4,000. While still significant, it's substantially less than the earlier figure. Previous estimates didn't take into account work for contracts that hadn't been awarded yet or new work that will flow into the space center, said Griffin.
Additionally, Griffin said that engineering work for sustaining Project Constellation (Ares, Orion and the Altair lunar lander) will be based at Kennedy Space Center, which is a departure from the shuttle program, which has sustaining engineering based mainly at Johnson Space Center in Texas and Marshall Spaceflight Center in Alabama. Basing the engineering work at Kennedy will likely result in hundreds, if not more, new positions being created at the center.
Griffing remained adamant that the shuttle must be retired in 2010 in order to keep Ares and Orion on schedule, due primarily to the shifting of funds from shuttle to Constellation and the need to turn over infrastructure for modification for the new program. However, under questioning from Sen. Nelson, he admitted NASA could fly an additional shuttle mission for another $300-400 million.
Nelson, other Senators and Congressmen as well as many scientists want the additional flight in order to fly the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer which was dropped from the shuttle manifest after the Columbia accident in order that the agency could focus on completing assembly of the space station by 2010. Griffin said that if the go-ahead were given by February 2009, that "we could execute the mission in the late summer of 2010."
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill this year authorizing the additional funds, as well as an extra $1 billion to accelerate Constellation, by a whopping majority of 405 to 19. However, the Senate still has to take up the matter, and the White House has threatened to veto any budget that exceeds its request. The House authorization is $2.8 billion more than the President requested.
After the NASA Administrator finished and a short resess, a second panel of witnesses took the stand for questioning. Testifying during the session round of questioning were local leaders Lynda Weatherman of the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast, Steve Kohler of Space Florida and Lisa Rice of Brevard Work Force Development, Inc.
Rice informed the assembled crowd that the Aerospace Career Development Council managed to obtain $1.25 million in funding for retraining aerospace workers worried about the prospect of being laid off. Affected workers can turn to Brevard Work Force Development, Inc. to explore the opportunities available for retraining.
Local agencies such as the Space Coast EDS and Space Florida are engaging in a variety of projects to attract non-NASA (commercial) space projects to the area, and also new companies outside of the space industry, as highlighted by the recent agreement with Brazilian light jet manufacturer Embraer to locate an aircraft manufacturing facility in Mellbourne, FL., bringing with it 200 highly paid jobs.
In a show of community support for the space program, a grass-roots effort called Link To Launch (http://www.linktolaunch.org/) organized a demonstration outside the hearing venue at the Canaveral Port Authority. Over 1,000 people, both space workers and community residents, gathered at 8:30 to hear Nelson and Martinez speak to the crowd.
At 9 o'clock, the assembly, numbering in excess of 1,000 demonstrators, linked hands and raised them to the sky in a symbolic show of support for NASA and the U.S. space program. The demonstration was meant to highlight the potential economic impact of the shuttle's retirement in a personal and highly visual way for the dignitaries as well as news media.
