Pending Florida Job Loss To Be Discussed

Too bad the public doesn't evaluate elected public officials under EVM criteria.

Ms. Kosmas & Mr. Nelson have to be effective with Shuttle workforce retention to get re-elected, it's as simple as that. A big show of doing this & trying that, like Nelson did, without results just won't do.

For starters, a combination of Shuttle extension and requiring that new HSF design, development, and assembly work (like the lunar lander thing) in addition to the usual KSC ground systems, be assigned directly to the Shuttle workforce, instead of outsourcing to a crop of KSC FTE contractor(s) "teams" hiring non-Shuttle-workforce outsiders.

Next, pay more attention to NASA CxP spending on "GFE" - who (FTEs), why ("GFE+FTE" vs. standard contract bidding), and where funding came from or is being charged to (and/or require thorough GAO/DCMA audits).

Lots of creative financing or innovative design review methods and other squirrely stuff apparently seems to be happening throughout CxPland. Even if KSC CxP and/or some former or current astronaut buddies are involved - so be it. Neither the former astronaut administrator nor the WH nor Congress should look the other way any longer. If NASA wants public support for that extra $3 billion, it should clearly demonstrate that it's no longer going to continue with milking itself for CxP (and whatever else SMD may be up to also). Time for a serious CxP audit, accounting, and house-cleaning.

Then, there's NASA earmarks to everywhere but Florida apparently. How about volunteering NASA to be an earmark reform pilot project? Since Nelson's apparently never earmarked for NASA, let him get one last big one in for Florida, then that's it. No more NASA earmarks allowed, cancel any in progress, and no more taking from NASA's budget to pay for someone else's pet project (e.g. McCain's pal Feingold using NASA funds to pay for 3rd world hunger projects & stuff).

What seems to be be missing is the acknowledgement that for space travel to become dependable and relatively inexpensive, the size of the workforce supporting it must decrease by a very large amount.

The biggest cost of the manned space program has got to be labor and the only way to make access to space affordable is to develop a launch system that requires far far fewer people than it does today.

To ignore that, is to doom any attempt to failure. The politicians are too stupid and self promoting to say what they know is true but that is how it must be.

The Shuttle program is far too labor intensive and is bloated by massive layers of management, oversight and contractor staffs.

Not a pleasant thing to hear if you work at KSC, JSC, etc. but it is the only way the country can afford such a program. Otherwise, it will collapse under its own bloated weight.

NASA worker

@hamptonguy
"The Shuttle program is far too labor intensive and is bloated by massive layers of management, oversight and contractor staffs."

BS!

That was the argument for the Outsourcing fad that was eventually going to collapse, ala Boeing Dreamliner.

Shuttle management is the most successful and effective in the world for HSF, precisely because of the people and management and thorough oversight checks & balances methodology. In the you get what you pay for logic, Quality American labor is priceless. American HSF Success has far more intrinsic in-the-national-interest value than it's current bargain-basement-costs.

And here's a well stated retort for the US affordability of the costs (hey, Fla Today finally grew a pair, LoL!:)

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20090927/COLUMNISTS0207/909270320/Matt-Reed--Trimming-fat-goes-far-in-space&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

You either have a lot of people building many rockets or a few people building one. If we want to support a large space workforce, we need to amp up the numbers and varieties of space hardware we use.

One thing that I've wondered about is how many of these people have skills that are useful on other rocket or aerospace projects?
I suspect if they were all highly educated and experienced, relocating them in the workforce wouldn't be such a big deal.

I agree with the idea of cancelling earmarks (although proposing that to do this, one should start with "one big earmark" doesn't compute)-- but this has been proposed many many times, and we still have them. Just how do ya plan to do it? The congress staff who put earmarks into funding bills are professionals.

As for jobs at KSC, there's a fundamental problem: the whole purpose is to reduce cost, and since almost of the cost is labor, any changes that reduce cost have to mean fewer jobs somewhere. At best, you can shuffle around the job loss from here to there. Saying "yes, we're getting rid of jobs, but not in my state" is just another form of earmarks.

@Maxwell:
"these people have skills that are useful on other rocket or aerospace projects?

Of course they do, but that's not the point. For KSC workers, non-hsf work is boring and why underemploy the most successful, skilled, and valuable American HSF workforce? One Shuttle worker's output is 2 or 3 times more effective than any cheaper newbie and far less of a risk impact on Safety, Quality, and Reliability. Newbies might seem cheaper, but are actually high maintenance on supervision & oversight.

@Geoff:
"but this has been proposed many many times

Cutting earmarks entirely was proposed, haven't heard of a pilot project for NASA only (or DOD only for that matter) to be in place. The Florida catchup earmark is exactly that - Florida's been getting the NASA shaft for years.

"the whole purpose is to reduce cost, and since almost of the cost is labor"

There's a point where labor costs are as low as they can go before something in Safety, Quality, & Reliability is negatively affected. That's true for any product - look at commercial airlines for instance. The Shuttle workforce has already been through 3 decades of better-faster-cheaper fads + genuine "continuous improvement" etc. etc. streamlining. Cutting labor costs any further in HSF for Shuttle is just not an option any longer and certainly won't be so for at the 1st 5 years or so of a new launch vehicle either.

More than likely, since station construction is winding down, there's probably some labor savings to be found there by moving to other programs. Problem is that station experience hasn't transfered well to HSF launch vehicles very well so they need some other project to work.

"have to mean fewer jobs somewhere"

And in the Bush CxP plan, somewhere apparently meant Florida. Level II program management PRCBs & support functions at JSC apparently tends to favor Republican states for funding work. So, transfering Level II HSF program management responsibility to Florida would certainly improve Florida's workload. It would also support better new launch vehicle design decision making that includes operations requirements & sustaining engineering cost considerations because those will be for the longest time period.

So, the whole point is that despite Commercials claiming cheaper-better-faster HSF, they're slowing learning the consequences (& NASA already did 40 years ago). Lowering labor costs is actually counterproductive in HSF launch vehicles. Look for cost savings in things like facilities maintenance via consolidations, energy efficiency/solar power, that kind of stuff.

So Congresswoman Kosmas is gonna discuss her work to minimize the gap? Where was she when the 787 billion dollar "stimulus" bill was passed? NASA got about a billion dollars, total. Lots more was spent for high speed rail for California, roads and bridges all over the place, etc. The "stimulus" bill reflects the priorities of the current Congress and it provides chump change for space. The stimulus bill itself (and the irresponsible spending of the Obama administration) commits us to spend a ton of money on interest payments - that we would not have had to spend without borrowing 1.8 trillion dollars. Obama could have funded space but he organized a commission to study it, instead. This is NOT support.

And "anobamanaut" said: "Shuttle management is the most successful and effective in the world for HSF, precisely because of the people and management and thorough oversight checks & balances methodology." but what about the findings of the Challenger and Columbia loss boards? Didn't they find a flawed safety culture, a management that had ignored problems? What would the prospect for Florida (and Alabama and other places) jobs be if they had not discouraged contrary opinions, etc? That same group is developing Ares/Orion! Give you a warm fuzzy feeling?

"Shuttle management is the most successful and effective in the world for HSF"

Huh ? Challenger, Columbia, CAIB report and the flight record of Soyuz disagree, strongly.

Dear ObamaNut,

Layoff the KSC koolaid. The Shuttle program is bureaucratic and pork-stuffed. That does not mean that most of the people working on the program are evil or bad. You dig a hole for yourself when you say that a Shuttle worker's output is 2 or 3 times more effective than someone else. After that comment I doubt if anyone read another word of your statement.

So it's official now. The entire thing is a job support scam at *federal* (not Florida's state) taxpayers' expense.

Plenty of folks got laid off in the last year from various US companies, what they got? Not even a freaking petition flood such as NASA has.

How come NASA's employees and contractors are *entitled* to a paycheck whereas other *productive* US workers and engineers are not (as it ought to be in an economic system with a free labor market - no one is entitled to a paycheck, supply and demand you know)?

"Cutting earmarks entirely was proposed, haven't heard of a pilot project for NASA only (or DOD only for that matter) to be in place. The Florida catchup earmark is exactly that"

Sorry, but when I hear somebody say "we gotta cut earmarks, but first we gotta get some for my state," my response is "ain't nothin changed, ain't nothin gonna change."

Everybody wants somebody else's earmarks cut. That's business as usual.

" - Florida's been getting the NASA shaft for years."

Ya think? Let's see-- NASA Glenn had 2797 employees in '93. It has 1656 today-- that's a 40% cut (with similar reductions in contractor personnel as well). I'd say it's not only KSC that's been getting cuts.