One Small Step For Unemployment?

It would appear NASA does not have enough money to complete construction on the International Space Station -- and if the agency cannot get additional funding cleared, it is looking to trimming an already thinned-out schedule of shuttle flights, as well as staffing cuts, to get the job done.

"It is incumbent on us to develop an executable option, or face the risk of a less desirable option being imposed upon us," NASA Administrator Mike Griffin wrote to space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier in an Oct. 4 memo obtained by USA Today.
 
In the memo, Griffin instructed Gerstenmaier to look into how much money could be saved, as well as how many jobs could then be cut, if Kennedy Space Center prepared one shuttle at a time for launch, versus working on all three remaining orbiters (Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour) at the same time.

The preparation work could then likely be performed by a single shift, working in a single shuttle hangar. The mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building would echo with the sounds of workers mating a single external tank and SRB pair at a time, according to USA Today.

"You would only really need one team of people working one shift to do that work," said the Space Foundation's Jim Banke. "You would not necessarily need to have full-up teams at each hangar or every facility that supports operating a whole fleet."

The agency likely to be hardest hit by any NASA cutbacks would be United Space Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed partnership employing approximately 6,500 workers who manage the day-to-day necessities of the shuttle fleet.

While USA would certainly shrink in size as a leaner NASA retools to go to the moon instead of focusing on reusable space vehicles, it expects to do so through normal employee retirement and attrition. "We have not and are not actively considering any layoffs at USA based on current plans and budgets," company spokesman Jeff Carr said. "We don't have any reason not to fully expect a reasonable and manageable solution to the budget challenges that NASA is facing in the out years."

The study is moot if NASA receives the $5 billion increase to its budget the agency has asked for to complete a full 19 shuttle missions -- 18 to the ISS, and one repair flight to the Hubble Telescope -- before the vehicle is retired in 2010.

In today's budgetary climate, however -- stretched by hurricane relief and the cost of war in Iraq -- there is no guarantee the agency will get even a part of that money. The final decision is expected to be made early next year, after President Bush submits his 2007 budget to Congress.

FMI: www.nasa.gov