With the end of the space shuttle program drawing nigh, NASA and the big aerospace contractors that have supported flying the shuttle, have started to shed thousands of talented people who will no longer be needed.
Publicly funded space programs and the jobs that go along with them have always been caught in a boom and bust cycle. The biggest boom was during Apollo, which at one point directly employed four hundred thousand people at NASA and the various aerospace contractors that supported the Moon landing program. The biggest bust came when Apollo was truncated in the early 1970s and 300,000 of those engineers, scientists, managers and office support staff lost their jobs, many never to return to aerospace. The loss of talent was incalculable, which hindered the space shuttle and space station programs once they started to ramp up.
The reduction in force that is happening as the space shuttle program ends and with no human space flight program in the foreseeable future will rival that of Apollo. Since the Constellation program has been canceled by President Barack Obama, NASA is not going to need so many engineers, scientists and so on. Thank you so much for your years of service. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
There is a glimmer of a silver lining in the current job draw-down that did not exist in the 1970s. There is a nascent commercial space industry, while largely dependent on government funding, has the potential for growth and therefore a need for people who are experienced in building and flying space craft. Companies like SpaceX already have a number of ex NASA people working for them.
More importantly the commercial space sector, especially when it begins to be less dependent on the government and start making more money from private customers, will be a great source of jobs for recent college graduates. The boom and bust cycle at NASA tended to make a lot of student leery about going into aerospace. Computers and electronics were far more promises industries where one could find a career.
This is important for NASA because when the next big space project is approved and funded, likely a revived space exploration program, it will need people with experience. Just as NASA has been the training ground for at least some of the people now working or soon to be working in the commercial space field, the commercial space field may be training the people who will build the ships that will take Americans back to the Moon and beyond, once a real leader is elected to the Presidency.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
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