NASA's Woes Echo Throughout the Clear Lake Area
Posted on: Friday, 29 July 2005, 15:00 CDT
Jul. 29--A grounding of the space shuttle fleet used to be a much tougher pill to swallow for Houston-area businesses that rely on the space program.
Following the 1986 Challenger disaster, there were heavy layoffs in the aerospace industry that ended up weakening NASA's pool of contractors. But after the Columbia accident in 2003, the space agency worked to maintain it.
"That was a smart decision by NASA to keep the expertise in place," said Ed Memi, a Boeing spokesman in Houston.
Since the Columbia disaster, NASA has kept contractors busy working to re-engineer the shuttle.
The latest grounding announced this week has many contractors saying it's either too early to speculate whether jobs will be lost, or that they're just too busy to worry about it.
"Its definitely too early to determine anything," said Kari Fluegel, a spokeswoman for United Space Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed that oversees the daily operations of the shuttle.
The alliance boasts about 10,000 employees. Of those, roughly 4,000 live and work in the Houston area.
Following the Columbia disaster, United Space Alliance kept busy with shuttle upgrades and did not lay off any workers.
Johnson Space Center is responsible for 16,800 jobs in the Houston area. Of those, 3,076 are civil employees who work directly for NASA and 13,798 are contractors, according to the University of Houston-Clear Lake's Center for Economic Development & Research. That number is up slightly from 2004.
The Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership lists 45 members in the Aerospace business other than prime NASA contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Space Alliance and Jacobs Sverdrup.
Nearly all of the work done at the space center is directly tied to the space shuttle and International Space Stations programs.
The total annual economic impact from JSC exceeds $3.5 billion, the group said.
Many of the contractors and NASA employees live in the Clear Lake area, a community tightly bound by its strong devotion to spaceflight. The words of the residents there on Thursday echoed closely those of the aerospace workers.
"Let's correct the problem and fly again," said Ron Murray, a lawyer and 25-year area resident who was dining Thursday at renowned astronaut hangout Frenchie's Italian Restaurant on NASA Road 1.
Smaller companies are especially likely to share those sentiments as they often feel the economic effects of fleet groundings more strongly than their bigger counterparts.
Most of the revenues for Webster-based Spacehab are directly tied to space shuttle and space station operations. The company supplies modules used to transfer and store equipment and research experiments in space.
Some of Spacehab's work for NASA allows them to only be paid when there is a shuttle launch or landing. However, NASA does pay it to maintain its equipment to keep it mission-ready.
"Obviously, when there is a grounding, that does affect us," said spokeswoman Kimberly Campbell.
Currently 237 people are employed by Spacehab, a number that declined slightly following the Columbia disaster.
Boeing and Lockheed, the largest contractors involved in the shuttle and space station programs, say the grounding creates mountains of work.
Boeing has about 2,300 people based in Houston. Of those, 800 work on the shuttle program, a number that has actually increased since 2003.
Lockheed, which built the tank, has about 1,300 employees in Houston, about 1,000 fewer than it did in 2004 when it lost a contract to provide engineering products and services for the space station.
Chronicle reporter Cindy Horswell contributed to this story.
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
Most of the work at Johnson Space Center involves the shuttle program and the international space station.
--Employment: 16,800 civilian and contract workers
--Annual economic impact: More than $3.5 billion
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Source: Houston Chronicle
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