KSC Expecting High Worker Losses with Shuttle Retirement

摘要

A NASA report released April 1 says the U.S. space agency's human spaceflight centers could lose as many as 10,000 contractor jobs by the time the space shuttle stops flying in 2010. Florida's Kennedy Space Center would be the hardest hit, with as many as 6,400 contractor jobs - about 80 percent of its current work force - eliminated in the next two to three years. Civil service employment levels would be largely unaffected. NASA officials cautioned that the projected job losses were a worst-case scenario that did not take fully into account the role that Kennedy and some of the other field centers will play in returning the United States to the Moon. In the weeks leading up to the release of the congressionally mandated biannual report, NASA officials here said they expected Kennedy's projected job losses would shrink by as much as half as the agency gets closer to awarding some $20 billion worth of contracts for the Ares 5 heavy-lift rocket and the four-person Al-tair lunar lander.