Layoff Anxiety Is Top Risk To Space Shuttle

pickens writes "Florida today reports that as NASA marches toward its final two shuttle flights, the safety of the crew rests with workers who know every bolt they turn, every heat-shield tile they inspect, brings them that much closer to the unemployment line in April 2011 raising concerns that people might jump ship early if other job opportunities open up. 'We've been most concerned about maintaining and sustaining the knowledge necessary to safely conduct mission operations,' says Retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Dyer. But shuttle work force surveys show a fierce loyalty and a dedication to sticking it out as long term employees want to be there when the last shuttle touches down. 'They love being part of NASA and what NASA does, and they love being part of the space shuttle program. And they want to be a part of it as long as we're doing the kinds of things that we're doing,' says LeRoy Cain, NASA's deputy shuttle program manager."

Comments

Layoff Anxiety?

[DarkKnightRadick]

This is exactly the reason that restaurants and other companies don't tell employees about plant or store closures until the last moment. It's not entirely fair to the workers, but many would rather find a new job quickly instead of being unemployed. I was out of work for nearly 2 months (and even then I was lucky in finding new work) when the restaurant I worked out told us 5 minutes before we walked out the door for the evening that we wouldn't be open in the morning.

I imagine those these folks working for NASA have skills that the private space agencies will definitely want and I wouldn't be surprised to see most of these guys going to work the next day for one of those companies.

Re:Layoff Anxiety?

[Yvanhoe]

And that's why in many of those "socialist" countries like France, firing or resigning has to be preceded by a notice at least 3 months before. It can be shorter if both parties agree but if they do not, the three months salary is due (to the employer if the employee quits earlier or to the employee if the employer wants to fire quickly). Exceptions exist though (professional fault, mainly) but it tends to make things a lot clearer and to give less incentive to hide the situation.

Why?

[trout007]

Since I work at KSC I guess I can provide some insight. The purpose of these new space plans is to reduce the cost of launches. The way you do that is by using a simpler vehicle and less people. So there is no way all or most of the people here will get new jobs in private space. Also Brevard County has a few other employees but most of it relies on KSC. So as people need to start moving to find other jobs housing prices will continue to plummet so expect lots of foreclosures and a total decimation of the local economy. The article is correct. Even facing these prospects most of the employees continue to do their job perfectly day in day out because of the love of the program and their country. When you see the orbiters they look like they just rolled out of the factory. Anything you read about orbiters deteriorating is a lie. They are pristine. Many people are still in denial that this county would be so stupid as to throw away such magnificent machines and they want to be there to keep them flying when we come to our senses.

Re:Why?

[Richard_at_work]

When you see the orbiters they look like they just rolled out of the factory. Anything you read about orbiters deteriorating is a lie. They are pristine.

With all the money and attention lavished on them, that is as it should be.

Many people are still in denial that this county would be so stupid as to throw away such magnificent machines and they want to be there to keep them flying when we come to our senses.

The shuttles barely have a niche now, and that niche only exists because people work hard to make it exist - the shuttles are a prime example of what not to do, and I couldn't care less (yes, that is the correct way to use that phrase - its "couldn't" not "could") if the shuttles never fleww again.

What the US needs now is a commuter vehicle, something that runs as regular as a standard family car, with similar maintenance levels, not classic car levels. The US does not need a 'do it all' vehicle which comes with an appropriately sized superbudget, it does not need the ability to haul the entire house with it each time it makes the commute from the house to the office. Leave the heavy lift to specialised vehicles, and leave the commuting to specialised vehicles - they are separate problems, they should have separate solutions.

Re:Why?

[strack]

when it costs a billion dollars per launch, it had better bloody well be pristine. a bad design still in pristine condition is still a bad design. the original concept of the space shuttle was to make space access inexpensive and safer. it has failed on both those fronts. it has frozen advancement in space launch for 30 years. hell, more than 30 years. the saturn V could do it cheaper, per kg, and safer too. with engine out capability, a real crew escape system, etc. etc. the shuttle is a dead end, and i for one want to make sure the door hits it in the ass on the way out. and as for those people out of a job, well damn, they could all still be employed by private space if nasa ups its commitment to private space, to the extent that they need the same manpower. only this time, a whole lot more tonnage will be getting to orbit.

Re:Why?

[Kaboom13]

The shuttles are a definitely not the best possible design, we know that now, but at the time they were built they seemed like a good idea. Either way, just because the shuttles aren't the ideal vehicle doesn't mean we should toss the whole program away, which is what we are doing. I live in Floida, and visit the space coast often and know a lot of the "little people" in the space program. They are insanely dedicated, even the people who do jobs others would consider demeaning or unimportant. They knew the people who died in the various NASA accidents way better then the engineers in Houston did, and they work every day to keep the astronauts safe. The majority of them can and will get better paying jobs in the private sector, many of them routinely turned down offers when economic times were better (no one is getting rich at NASA).

There is a ridiculous amount of institutional knowledge in the shuttle program, as well as a culture the defies all the regular government stereotypes. Once the team is disbanded and goes their separate ways we will have lost our best shot as a country at safe sustained manned space flight. We should have had a next generation vehicle ready to transition them too, but politics and the vague promise that somehow commercial space flight will fill in has killed it. Apparently as a country we no longer want to lead in the realms of science and engineering, and are content to have our only government funded innovations come in the form of new banking procedures to steal from the poor and give to the rich.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had vast experience working STS ascent GN&C in the 80's and early 90's. I worked about 22 missions and I can tell you the Shuttle has never been able to put 65,000 lbs in polar orbit. The best it could do for a 90 degree launch would be about 35,000 lbs. It would also have had to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base since you can't launch polar from KSC due to abort restrictions. Vandenberg was never used due to the Challenger disaster and the launch pad there was converted to launch Delta IVs so you couldn't even do a Shuttle polar mission.

BTW, even though the original design specs called for 65,000lbs, the Shuttle has never been able to put 65,000 lbs in orbit heading due east from KSC. It gets a maximum of 55,250 lbs.

Even though I loved working on the Shuttle program, I think we would have been better off building a separate crew transport and improving the heavy lift capability we already had.

Re:Why?

[Teancum]

I have no doubt that the finest work ever done in relation to the Shuttle program is perhaps being done now by the workers at KSC, and that these vehicles are in the best shape that they have ever been in.

The issue is that the time to save the Shuttle program has passed by and that the production lines needed to replace parts currently being used for the maintenance have now shut down, and that there is a need to at least replace the Columbia and perhaps create a few more new orbiters in order to really use this capability to its fullest. Getting that supply chain going again including restoring the staff at the Michoud Assembly Facility is not just difficult, I would dare say that in the current federal budget environment would be impossible to accomplish. And that is but the most obvious facility that has already had lay-offs with the employees already gone and moved on to other things. Many other factories involved with the construction and maintenance of the Space Shuttle have had similar kinds of lay-offs.

If anything, what is happening at KSC is just a delayed action to stuff that has been happening for years now.

Would it stink if it were me in the position you are in? Absolutely! I would be hating life in that kind of circumstance. I am very much aware that this is going to force many people to change their lifestyles in Brevard County. Then again, the problem is that everybody is depending on the government here where there are another thousand counties or so in America that are asking why are they sending money to this county when they would be just as deserving.

Over time, I think this is going to be something better for that part of Florida anyway, and in terms of places to perform launches into orbit, KSC is quite difficult to beat. It still is one of the premier locations on the Earth for orbital spaceflight and that is a fact of geography that other places like Virginia, Texas, and New Mexico can't beat.

I agree that what needs to happen is to reduce the cost of launches and spaceflight in general. I personally don't think that the Ares/Orion (or this new "heavy lift vehicle" for that matter) is going to be any cheaper, but that is a personal opinion and the sentiment is well in hand. To me, the best chance that KSC has is to encourage The Florida Space Authority to get its act together and turn KSC into the spaceflight equivalent of the O'Hare International Airport. I believe that day is coming where even NASA is going to be told to wait for an opening for launch with a launch window measured on the order of minutes instead of days because of the sheer traffic happening there. Perhaps other locations could open up that might work out better, but I think it would take an idiot to pass up on the potential of that launch location for all but specialized flights.

It is time to let the Space Shuttle go gracefully into history. That program has served our country well, and so have the thousands of dedicated people who have help to get that hunk of equipment into orbit. The jobs are eventually going to return, but it won't be the same kind of jobs and the companies involved won't be the same either. In fact, many of the companies who will eventually be there may not even exist yet. That would be my suggestion: find those companies or form one of them if you have the skills necessary.

Re:Why?

[Teancum]

The biggest expense for the US is military.

This used to be true. Now the largest expense in the federal government is interest on federal debt, with the #2 largest expense being Social Security payments, and #3 is health care benefits to federal workers (and this was before Obamacare went into effect).

Military spending is now #6 or #7 on the list of top fiscal outlays, and falling. Appropriations for NASA hardly even show up on the pie graphs at all, and this year are down to 0.1% of the federal budget.

You point is well taken, but military spending shouldn't be made out to be the bad guy here even though they still do get a huge hunk of change every year.

Layoff Anxiety Is Top Risk To Space Shuttle?

[vandelais]

Here it was I thought dying in a gigantic fireball upon liftoff or reentry was the top risk.
Those were the days.

look up warn act

[Joe The Dragon]

look up warn act

WARN Act layoff notice laws require employers to give employees notification before mass layoffs or plant closings

Re:look up warn act

[vlm]

WARN Act layoff notice laws require employers to give employees notification before mass layoffs or plant closings

Or pay a modest fine that can't be collected from a bankrupt store/restaurant etc and is probably less than the productivity losses from pre-announcing at the plant.

On the other hand theres no point in carrying this too far, once you get to assembly plants (automotive, etc) everyone knows when no supply orders are delivered anymore, etc.

As a hint, if the store is accumulating empty unstocked shelves, its going down....

Re:look up warn act

[morgan_greywolf]

Yep.The WARN Act is practically pointless. You can always tell when massive layoffs are starting because the company will do things like institute a freeze on all hiring, stop buying office supplies, refuse requests for purchase orders, cancel projects previously thought to be important, etc.

Unfortunately, the commuter model doesn't work

[Kupfernigk]

The energy distance from the ground to even low earth orbit is such that your "commuter vehicle" has to carry many times its own weight in fuel, and the fuel is very nasty stuff. Human beings with their fragility and their extensive maintenance requirements are the very worst kind of payload. If your car had to make it to the office through hard vacuum, carrying many times its own weight of fuel, it would indeed need to do the equivalent of carrying the entire house with it.

Although the ideal requirement can be stated concisely, that does not mean it is actually possible. NASA's overall problem is one of mission incompatibility. Normally if I post something like this, somebody replies "with your attitude we wouldn't have discovered fire yet". To which the reply is that fire is ridiculously easy to discover; wait for a thunderstorm after a dry period. We have got where we are because energy became more and more readily available as our tools improved. But energy has ceased to become more readily available; we do not have any feasible technology for space lift that does not require exotic chemical mixtures. NASA is being asked to look at the wrong end of the telescope. Much better fuel or lift means needs to come first. Douglas Adams, who was no fool, satirised the problem with his infinite improbability drive and bistromath drives, but in fact he identified the core problem in space travel.

NASA tanked a long time ago

[Animats]

This is just the maintenance crew. NASA's real collapse came at the end of Apollo, when they laid off most of the people who designed and engineered spacecraft. NASA, like Google now, had been the place where the really smart and competent people went. That all ended around 1973.