Obama's Budget Could Hurt Clear Lake

NASA budget creates uncertainty in Clear Lake
By ERIC BERGER and STEWART M. POWELL
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Change came to Washington a year ago with the election of President Barack Obama, and one year later it is thundering through Houston's space community like a shuttle's sonic boom.

The totality of impacts from Obama's proposed NASA budget for Houston, the Clear Lake community surrounding Johnson Space Center and even for the astronauts themselves is still far from certain.

Space agency officials declined Tuesday to even confirm that NASA's astronaut corps would continue after the space shuttle retires within the next year.

“Right now I just don't think it's right to guess one way or another,” said William Gerstenmaier, who, as associate administrator for space operations, oversees human spaceflight at NASA.

But it's the economic impact from potential job losses fueling the most concern.

Obama's proposal to terminate the shuttle program after five more flights was widely anticipated, but his additional proposal to end the next-generation Constellation Program raises questions — most unanswered — over whether there can be a smooth transfer for employees from one spaceflight program to another.

The NASA manager who oversaw Constellation's efforts to design the next generation of rockets and spacecraft, Doug Cooke, acknowledged that “its end will create an angst among the workers who have been working it, and the immediate effect it will have on jobs.”

It's an angst being felt across the Clear Lake area.

“It will definitely impact our local economy and trickle down to small businesses,” said Cindy Harreld, president & chief executive of the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce.
Up to 2,500 jobs at stake

According to the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, the region may lose 2,200 to 2,500 jobs with Constellation's cancellation. There are about 18,000 aerospace jobs in Houston, more than 90 percent located in the Bay area.

Johnson Space Center manages about $4 billion in federal aerospace contracts each year.

“Our hope is that Congress will see the importance of manned spaceflight and overturn what the president is proposing,” Harreld said.

The space center is the heart of NASA's human spaceflight program, housing its astronaut corps and directing all activity in space, including the International Space Station.

From that perspective, Obama's decision to extend the station's life through 2020 provides at least one concrete role for the space center for the next decade.

The uncertainty comes from two other proposals.

The cancellation of Constellation would remove a firm commitment from NASA to launch humans and fly them beyond Earth's orbit.
Ex-astronaut hopeful

The astronaut corps already was facing a reduction in spaceflight opportunities from a couple dozen a year, with the shuttle's retirement, to a handful aboard the space station. Without Constellation, there's no specific plan for any other flights.

And it's possible that astronauts flying to the station might be hired and supervised by a private contractor.

“I'm sure there's a lot of uncertainty in the astronaut corps over the future,” said Leroy Chiao, a veteran of three shuttle flights and a six-month stint aboard the ISS. “I know I'd be concerned if I were still in the corps.”

Yet Chiao, who also served on last summer's panel to review human spaceflight, led by Norman Augustine, noted that Space Station Freedom, first proposed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, was nearly canceled before being transformed into the space station program.

Chiao believes a new strategy for human spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit will emerge from NASA planners. “I feel confident the United States is not going to give up human spaceflight,” he said. “But until there's a new program I would expect there to be some angst.”

The other major change in Obama's space policy calls for $6 billion to be spent to help private companies develop rockets and crew capsules to carry astronauts to the ISS.

California has a larger private aerospace industry than Texas, but the hope is that Houston firms will get some of the work.

On Tuesday NASA Administrator Charles Bolden selected seven commercial aerospace firms to serve as the nation's “space pioneers” in Obama-era exploration, including Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration. It won $18 million to develop a transportation system and seven-person crew capsule that NASA may choose to ferry astronauts and cargo to the ISS as early as 2016.

Bolden, a former astronaut, said the administration was abandoning the long-standing practice of having the space agency finance human space exploration to enlist “the entrepreneurial mind-set into a field that is poised for rapid growth and new jobs.”
Possible job transfers

Boeing already does significant space shuttle work for NASA, and the new contract, as well as subsequent funding, would allow the company to transfer some shuttle employees in Houston to the new concept, said Keith Reiley, program manager for the company's Commercial Crew Development initiative.

Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, said he did not have any independent assessment of NASA-related job losses in Houston, though he has been a reliable supporter of the Constellation program and voiced opposition to canceling it. “We are on the verge of abandoning human space flight in the near term,” Olson said. “And I fear beyond that.”

eric.berger@chron.com
stewart.powell@chron.com