WASHINGTON, April 1 — Retiring the space shuttle in 2010 could result in the loss of 8,000 jobs among NASA contractors and 600 Civil Service workers at the agency, NASA said Tuesday.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, under orders from Congress, released its first estimates of job losses as it continued the transition from the shuttle program to the Constellation program. That program is developing a new generation of spacecraft and rockets to service the International Space Station and carry people to the Moon and, later, Mars.
NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, William H. Gerstenmaier, cautioned that the job losses might appear worse than they would end up. As the agency gears up for the Constellation program, Mr. Gerstenmaier said in a telephone news conference, a potentially large number of employees could transfer to new openings developing, building and operating Constellation spacecraft and rockets.
The Orion capsule, which could take astronauts to the space station and the Moon, is not scheduled to begin flights until 2015.
In addition, he said, some workers might go to private companies planning to support NASA’s space efforts commercially and others might choose to retire. About 25 percent of the contractor workforce is eligible for retirement, agency officials said.
Mr. Gerstenmaier cautioned that the estimates were preliminary and that people should not “overreact to these numbers.” It could take more than a year for the agency to develop more concrete job forecasts, he said.
Hardest hit would be the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., from which the shuttle fleet operates. It could lose 6,400 of its 8,000 contract workers by 2011. The Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which makes the external fuel tanks for the shuttle, could lose 1,300 of 1,900 positions.
Representative Dave Weldon, a Florida Republican who was a co-sponsor of the bill calling for the report, said in a statement the “draconian” losses showed that the Bush administration’s space plan was inadequate and underfinanced, and needed to be revised.