NASA: Lost in Space
After 30 years, the Shuttle
program will end. How do you outsource the astronaut
business?
By Paul M. Barrett
It's 9 a.m., and 100 employees
of the Kennedy Space Center are lining up for the chance
to do some freelance work. Director Michael Bay will use
the famed NASA facility—origin of the Apollo moon shots
and home of the flare-winged Space Shuttle—as a backdrop
for Transformers 3, the finale of his alien
robot war trilogy, a Hollywood tip-of-the-hat to a place
that once launched the future. Bay needs extras—and
Kennedy has no shortage.
The facility's main mission,
launching Space Shuttles, is about to end. Eight thousand
engineers, technicians, and other employees are losing
their jobs. Nearby towns that were built around NASA's
programs—Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Titusville—are
already in a defensive crouch, like wobbly boxers waiting
for a knockout punch.
NASA management is holding
"morale events" to elevate spirits. A few days before the
casting call, agency officials eased security rules to
allow employees' families to witness what is expected to
be the final "rollout" of the orbiter Discovery. In a
majestic evening ceremony, the Shuttle was transported
from the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building to the
launchpad. Bathed in xenon spotlights, the white
spaceship, attached to its twin solid rocket boosters and
orange external fuel tank, crept 3.4 miles on the back of
an enormous tractor called the Crawler. An armed
helicopter and a nearly full moon hovered overhead.
Husbands and wives and children stood in a roped-off
parking lot next to minivans, clapping and whistling. Some
wept.
In February, the Obama
Administration abruptly canceled an over-budget program
called Constellation that was supposed to take Americans
back to the moon for the first time since 1972—and then on
to Mars. For 30 years, NASA has flown the Shuttle, built
and maintained the International Space Station, and
overseen unmanned scientific probes. But no one seems
certain where Americans should go next in space.
Implicitly acknowledging NASA's lack of direction, the
White House has instructed the agency to take a deep
breath, marshal resources, and chart a new course. Routine
trips to what is known as low earth orbit—the Space
Shuttle's traditional responsibility—are supposed to be
outsourced to private industry. Trying to protect jobs and
existing contracts, Congress has slowed the Obama reform
initiative without entirely stopping it. That leaves NASA
trapped in what James E. Ball, an agency program manager
in Florida, calls "a period of sustained ambiguity." This
much is clear: The Shuttle will fly for the last time next
year, and NASA has no new manned government rockets ready
to go anytime soon. For five years, or maybe more, any
American astronaut heading to the heavens will have to get
there by renting a seat in a Russian Soyuz capsule or one
of the several corporate-owned spacecraft now in
development.
Rather than use the end of the
three-decade Shuttle program to streamline NASA and
sharply articulate new goals for space exploration in a
way that would command public attention, much of the
political leadership in Washington appears to be ignoring
the issue. Communities along Florida's Space Coast, built
on the optimism and industry of the space program, are in
economic peril. The area's 12 percent unemployment rate—2½
points higher than the national average—is expected to
rise to 15 percent over the next year, mostly as a result
of the space industry contraction. Meanwhile, as America
dithers, Russia, China, India, and other countries are
expanding their shares of the space market.
Travis T. Thompson sits in an
air-conditioned conference room talking about the end of
the Shuttle program. A compact man with a handlebar
moustache, he heads the orbiter closeout crew; he's the
guy who shakes hands with each astronaut just before they
lift off. "You come back and see me now," he tells them.
Thompson, 52, speaks of his work with quiet pride. "What I
do," he says, "is put astronauts in spaceships and close
the hatch."
After three final flights—one
scheduled for Nov. 1, two in 2011—the trio of tile-skinned
orbiters will be cleaned, stripped of classified gear, and
sent to museums. Thompson's job will end. The customized
747s that piggyback Shuttles to Florida after California
landings will be retrofitted for less exotic cargo. The
mighty Crawler, which ferried Shuttles to the launchpad,
will be reduced to hauling more terrestrial freight around
the Space Center.
The weathered beach towns and
small inland cities where space workers live and patronize
local businesses were already hit hard by the recession,
and now things will get worse. The Kennedy head
count—civil servants and contractors—will fall from 15,000
in 2009 to 7,000 or lower. Nearly all the cuts will affect
private sector workers; the 2,100 direct NASA employees
currently are not targeted for layoffs. Overall, the Space
Center workforce earns an average annual wage of $75,000,
compared with $47,000 "outside of the gate." Nationally,
the loss of space jobs in Florida, California, Louisiana,
Texas, Utah, and other states could approach that of
Kennedy.
In Cocoa Beach, south of the
Space Center, the Durango Steakhouse and a large Chinese
restaurant have shut their doors in recent weeks. Strip
malls have been emptied of their manicure salons and home
furnishing shops. Tourism remains, but the seasonal surf
shacks and burger joints can't make up for the lost
economic activity.
"I've seen this picture before,"
says Thompson, tugging on his NASA baseball cap. He works
for United Space Alliance, the main Shuttle operator,
which is jointly owned by Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT). As a young man, he
lived through the local slump that accompanied the end of
the Apollo program in 1975. In an earlier period of
indecision and funding debates, NASA spent the late 1970s
scrambling for sufficient political support to get the
Shuttle built and aloft. Thompson's hometown, Titusville,
"became a ghost town after Apollo," he says. "People were
walking away from houses, leaving the keys under the mat."
Shuttles didn't begin to fly until 1981, after which
Kennedy and its environs enjoyed a period of relative
economic stability. Now the highways are lined with
billboards that say: "Changing Jobs?" They advertise
financial advice for people who are unsure of what to do
with their uprooted 401(k) accounts.
Thompson has worked at Kennedy
for 31 years. He knows he should be looking for a new
career. So far, he hasn't summoned the will. He distracts
himself from the coming bad news by focusing on safely
launching the final Shuttles. Even as résumé workshops and
job fairs have proliferated, many in the area are
struggling to imagine life after the Shuttle, says Lisa
Rice, president of Brevard Workforce, a county agency. She
has placed around 100 ex-Shuttle workers out of the 1,900
let go since last year.
Opportunities could still arise
from the turmoil. Once Congress and the White House
clarify short-term funding issues, Boeing, Lockheed, and
smaller rivals such as Elon Musk's Space Exploration
Technologies could jostle for pieces of an increasingly
privatized market. Frank DiBello, 67, a space industry
consultant and investor, has come out of retirement to
lead a state-sponsored economic diversification
initiative, with the goal of bringing tech-based
businesses to Florida that could scoop up some of the
laid-off NASA workforce.
Much will have to happen before
the Space Coast realizes DiBello's shiny aspirations. "We
are going to go through a lot of hurt in regard to layoffs
of a highly skilled workforce that Florida needs to ensure
its future," he says.
Robert D. Cabana, the director
of the Kennedy Space Center, visited his future workplace
for the first time in 1970 as a member of the U.S. Naval
Academy's Physics Honor Society. The brainy midshipman
gaped at a Saturn V rocket, the kind that took Apollo
astronauts to the moon. "That was our future and our pride
at that time," Cabana recalls.
After graduation, he flew A-6
Intruders in the U.S. Marine Corps, became a test pilot
and colonel, and, on his second try, was accepted in 1985
into the elite astronaut program. He flew on four Shuttle
missions, including the one in 1998 that inaugurated the
assembly of the International Space Station. Today,
Cabana, 61, is in charge of thinning the ranks of
employees in the hangars and labs and control rooms
scattered across 140,000 acres of alligator-infested swamp
and scrub.
Wiry and intense, Cabana seems
surprised, and maybe insulted, when asked to explain the
Space Shuttle's value. "It's just a phenomenal vehicle,"
he answers. With it, NASA took the lead in creating the
space station, where humans have learned how to survive
for months in micro-gravity and do biomedical and
astronomical research. The Shuttle launched and serviced
the Hubble telescope, which revolutionized our
understanding of the cosmos. The craft has also
facilitated robotic probes of the earth's climate,
Jupiter's atmosphere, and the sun's radiation. Its science
contributes to the ongoing search for distant planets that
support life. Closer to home, its spinoffs such as
advanced home insulation and biodegradable lubricants have
improved everyday life.
The frustrating truth is that
relatively few Americans care about the scientific
missions that came after Apollo's giant leaps for mankind.
Since the last trip to the moon 38 years ago, NASA, for
all the skill and bravery of its employees, has given the
impression of an organization on a space walk to nowhere.
A succession of agency leaders have grasped at grandiose
proposals—go back to the moon, on to asteroids and
Mars—that have fallen through for lack of support on
Capitol Hill. To justify an annual budget now in the $19
billion range, the agency has kept the Shuttle flying, no
small feat, given its aging late-'70s technology. Even a
Shuttle enthusiast like Cabana has to admit—and does,
reluctantly—that the venerable craft has proven with more
than sufficient repetition that man can achieve low earth
orbit.
In 2004, the space agency
commissioned a consumer study by the Center for Cultural
Studies & Analysis in Philadelphia. "Despite a strong
emotional attachment to NASA," the think tank reported,
"many of the agency's achievements since the end of the
Apollo program have failed to resonate, or even register,
with the public." Why? "In the mind of the public," the
research showed, "human exploration of space is NASA's
brand." The brand having badly eroded, the Bush
Administration announced in 2004 that the Shuttle program
would end this decade. Outside NASA and aerospace
contracting circles, few people seemed to notice. "The
space program," says the business veteran DiBello, "has
become too much of a federal jobs program."
DiBello earned a math degree at
Villanova University, advised the Defense Dept. on missile
performance, and consulted with corporations that
manufacture and service rockets while working for KPMG
Peat Marwick for 25 years. In the 1990s he launched
SpaceVest, a venture capital firm in northern Virginia.
Throughout, he watched as politicians and bureaucrats
spread NASA resources around the country: launches at
Kennedy, mission control at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, propulsion engineering in Huntsville, Ala.,
rocket testing in southern Mississippi, management of
astronomy missions at the Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
"Everyone gets a piece of the
action," says DiBello, who has deep-set owlish eyes and a
Philadelphia-accented baritone. "The program gets pulled
in different directions based on which senator or
congressman wants business for his or her district." As a
result, he adds with a sigh, "We have been foundering from
the moment we set foot on the moon."
To replace the Shuttle, the Bush
Administration said the Constellation program would lead
to a manned Mars landing. In a speech a year after the
lethal explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Bush
promised a rededication to bold voyaging. "We choose to
explore space," he said, "because doing so improves our
lives and lifts our national spirit." The retirement of
the Shuttle was supposed to free up money for a new family
of long-distance, heavy-lift rockets.
The Bush Administration's
proposed funding for the program was "grossly inadequate,"
according to DiBello. The Shuttle flies for about $3
billion a year. An optimistic bill to get to Mars would
come to half a trillion dollars over time. The Bush
Administration suggested that, somehow, Constellation
could get off the ground within NASA's existing
inflation-adjusted budget. By 2009, Constellation was
already way over budget and far behind schedule. The Obama
White House decided to cut the losses at about $10
billion. A 355-foot, $300 million steel tower that would
have launched Constellation's rockets now stands without
an immediate purpose at the Kennedy Space Center.
The latest White House plan has
several components—and just as many risks. Private sector
corporations, rather than the government, are supposed to
provide transportation of cargo and crew to the Space
Station. Contractors such Space Exploration Technologies,
started in 2002 by Musk, the founder of PayPal (EBAY), are testing
proprietary rockets for this purpose. In June, Musk's
company staged a successful inaugural flight of its Falcon
9 launch vehicle from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
adjacent to the Kennedy complex.
In theory, the outsourcing of
low earth orbit will make available resources for NASA to
focus on farther-reaching manned exploration. How this
strategy will be implemented—and at what cost over what
period of time—remains unclear. The $58 billion,
three-year NASA authorization legislation passed by the
House on Sept. 30, and earlier by the Senate, endorses
Obama's mandate to use taxpayer money to spur commercial
rocket development. But it cuts back on the amount of
money devoted to that goal. The legislation, which Obama
signed in October, instructs NASA to move ahead with a new
spacecraft that could land on an asteroid by 2025. But in
a nod to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and lawmakers
representing states with existing Shuttle operations,
Congress also exhorts the space agency to rely as much as
possible on existing technology and personnel.
A new round of legislative
jockeying will commence when congressional appropriations
committees—the panels that cut federal checks—turn their
attention to the space program after the election. "My
fear is that Congress will continue to set ambitious but
vague goals without giving NASA the resources needed to
accomplish them," says DiBello.
One assumption built into the
Obama plan is that private industry will get routine space
work done much less expensively than the government. But
given that corporations already do a lot of this sort of
labor under contracts with NASA, the premise raises
questions about how they will suddenly become more
cost-effective, especially without sacrificing safety.
Patty Stratton, a senior manager
with United Space Alliance, the contractor jointly owned
by Boeing and Lockheed Martin that operates much of the
Shuttle program at Kennedy, offers the metaphor of a
lightbulb. "When you come into a room, you flip the light
switch, and the light goes on. You replace the bulb from
time to time," she says. "With the Shuttle, we put in a
new bulb every single time. It gets expensive."
Contractors claim they can operate faster and leaner once
they're freed of NASA bureaucracy.
Following similar reasoning, the
Pentagon and the State Dept. in recent years have
outsourced large portions of logistical, infrastructure,
and even security work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war
zones. The results have been disappointing, with
government auditors having identified billions of dollars
in corporate waste, fraud, and other misconduct.
The comparison NASA and its
contractors prefer is that of the postal service and
commercial airlines. In the 1920s, when air travel was
still new, the federal government allowed nascent airlines
to bid on mail delivery contracts. Washington's backing
allowed the airlines to expand into cargo and passenger
service. Costs came down as they were spread across more
profit-generating businesses. The idea is that as space
travel becomes more common, it will foster new commercial
research and adventure tourism. Corporations will be able
to defray costs and reduce bills for taxpayers.
The potential flaw in this
argument is that, for the foreseeable future, there just
isn't that much that absolutely has to be done in space.
Beyond launching and maintaining communications
satellites, where is the profit-driven space market? How
many tourists, apart from a few millionaires, really want
to spend their vacations in stomach-turning micro-gravity?
DiBello insists that the greatest potential is in fields
such as medical research, and in technologies yet to be
discovered. Space activity has produced valuable
inventions such as global positioning devices that have
had lucrative commercial applications.
Whether or not privatization
saves money, it has already changed attitudes and reversed
roles at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA officials for the
first time are pitching the center's capabilities—and its
potential improvement—to audiences of corporate executives
who will decide where to locate new commercial space
operations. In September, Boeing formally announced that
it would get into the space tourism and astronaut
transport business, with flights scheduled to start as
early as 2015. What site will host those launches hasn't
been determined, but the Kennedy complex is a leading
contender.
Avera Motors, a 2009 spinoff
from Mainstream Engineering, a Florida-based developer of
energy conversion products, also hopes to capitalize on
the ferment at Kennedy. The company occupies an
11,000-square-foot facility in Brevard County where its
20-person team has fabricated a prototype of a
low-emission, high-mileage sports car it plans to sell in
late 2012. In addition to privately raised seed money,
Avera's chief executive officer, 27-year-old R.J.
Scaringe, has received $2.5 million in state financing,
some of it secured by DiBello. Scaringe, who has a PhD in
mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, plans to step up hiring early next year. If
his car finds buyers, he foresees employing 1,100 people
by 2015—a bold goal. "The skilled technical workers
becoming available because of the Shuttle layoffs," he
says, "are perfect for us."
Rob Schneider, 44, cannot wait
around for Avera to start hiring. The heavy machinery
mechanic employed by United Space Alliance has logged 10
years fixing Kennedy's forklifts and cranes. He expects to
lose his position within a year and wants to sell his
Brevard County house before the real estate market dips
further. His wife, Sherry, has already moved to Columbia,
S.C., where she found work as an elementary school
principal. One of their two sons moved with her; the other
is finishing high school in Brevard. Schneider talks over
coffee and donuts in the local lodge of the International
Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, where he
is a member. Looking out from the wall, a yellowed poster
of the space center's namesake, John F. Kennedy, states:
"The work you are doing is vital to our national
security."
Schneider tries to sound upbeat.
"We got it good compared to a lot of people, because my
wife already found a new job," he says. He is interviewing
for railroad work in South Carolina. The best scenario he
envisions would involve taking a 20 percent pay cut.
"The tradition around space is
what I'm worried will go away," says Roberta Wyrick, 56. A
United Space employee, she oversees orbiter testing and is
integrally involved with launches. In her spare time, she
takes Boy and Girl Scouts on tours. Wyrick has a math
degree from the University of Central Florida and 31 years
of experience at Kennedy. She has heard that there may be
jobs at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern
shore of Virginia, where smaller research launches take
place, but she has not formally inquired yet. "I've got a
house here, and I thought I would retire from Kennedy,"
she says. "I launch Shuttles....When I see it on the pad,
getting ready, my heart just starts beating faster."
Weeks after my visit to the
Space Center, the director, Bob Cabana, calls out of the
blue. "NASA," he wants to remind me, "is not going away by
any means." But actually what prompted him to reach out,
he explains, was a sense of loss. "I just said goodbye to
900 good people for the last time," he says of the latest
stage of layoffs. "I can't put into words what that feels
like." There is a long pause. Then the former Marine test
pilot and astronaut reiterates his invitation to come back
down for one of the last Shuttle launches: "It's just a
phenomenal thing to see," he says. "Phenomenal."
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
