NASA lay-offs loom.

FOX 26
HOUSTON - Perhaps as many as one thousand people from the NASA community are being laid off Friday.

The cut-backs are among NASA contractors tied to the Space Shuttle Program that has just 3 launches remaining.

The United Space Alliance (USA) says it's letting go of 333 employees from its Houston office and nearly 900 employees in Florida.

"Today we say goodbye to a remarkable group of people," said USA's Chief Executive Officer Virginia Barnes Friday morning. Barnes statement continued, "Although our workforce has known for several years that the Space Shuttle Program was scheduled to end, layoffs are always difficult. The accomplishments of this team are unmatched in human spaceflight."

USA is providing severance pay to the laid off employees based on years of service. Minimum severance would be 4 weeks pay up to a maximum of 26 weeks. A spokeswoman with the company says some of them have spent their careers working on the Shuttle Program, and at least one employee began his work on NASA projects with the Apollo Program.

Some jobs were saved by the new NASA appropriations bill because it revived production of the Orion Space Capsule.

Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Linda Singleton tells FOX 26 that it is not laying off employees Friday "in light of the recent NASA Authorization Bill announcements." Singleton says Lockheed Martin has 3,100 employees working on Orion, with 600 in the Clear Lake area.

But Congress did cut the Constellation project, eliminating a manned mission to the moon.
Bob Mitchell of the Bay Area/Houston Economic Partnership says that gave Shuttle employees no where to go.

"There's probably about another 17 or 18 contractors involved, and the number could reach as high as 850 to 1000 today," Mitchell said Friday Morning.

Mitchell says a large number of those people are highly skilled, and the Bay Area hopes they won't have to move out of town or out of state to make a living.

Mitchell says he worked with Congress on the appropriations bill for 5 months, and the NASA community is having to the take the bad with the good.

"At least we have a direction," Mitchell said. "It may not be the perfect bill but we have a mission. We know we'll be able to maintain America's superiority in human space flight, and we were about to lose that with what the [Obama] administration was trying to do."

The Clear Lake area may also benefit from President Obama's effort to stimulate the commercial aeronautics industry.


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