Up to 5,000 Layoffs Loom Across Country as Constellation Fight Continues

Ares I-X lifts off from the Cape.

NASA contractors across the country are bracing for layoffs as a result of the Obama Administration’s efforts to kill the Constellation program. Alabama, Texas and Utah — where workers are building key elements of NASA’s next human spaceflight program — would be especially hard hit.

The Huntsville Times reports:

Huntsville is bracing for “serious and significant job loss” after NASA’s decision to cut nearly $1 billion from the Constellation rocket program, Mayor Tommy Battle says…

Battle declined to speculate on how many of an estimated 1,500 Constellation support jobs here are at risk. The process will play out over the next 90 days, Battle said….

The federal Anti-Deficiency Act requires those set-asides, Bolden said, although Battle said Tuesday “it has never been enforced.” Bolden told contractors NASA would basically hold back the money from what they can spend the rest of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

The result, NASA estimated, will be between 2,500 and 5,000 lost contractor jobs nationwide, including here.

There’s also a lot of anger in Texas, which is home to NASA’s mission control, and Utah, where workers are building the Ares rocket:

Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership President Bob Mitchell was equally upset.

“It’s amazing to me,” he said, “how three or four individuals at NASA headquarters can dictate to Congress, NASA and America its future in human space exploration. NASA headquarters continues with its backdoor, behind-the-scenes mandates. It continues to play games with the men and women of NASA and of the aerospace contractors (continuing) to kick Congress in the teeth.”

In Utah, where some 2,000 working on the Area rocket at Alliant Techsystems (ATK) may face almost immediate layoffs, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said, “This latest attempt by the administration to force an early termination of the Constellation program is nothing more than a disingenuous legal maneuver to circumvent statutory language that was put in place to prevent this very type of action.

“Thousands more will be out of work, and our industrial base will suffer an irreversible blow,” Bishop said.

Aviation Week reports that uncertainty is not only affecting existing contractors but those companies who hope to gain from the shift toward commercial spaceflight:

But the merchant seven—Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, which hold milestone-driven multi-billion-dollar contracts to deliver cargo to the ISS, and the five companies awarded stimulus-package funding to develop commercial crew transport technology—also are feeling the crunch. Their funds depend to one degree or another on passage of a Fiscal 2011 NASA budget at least somewhat like the one President Barack Obama requested, and so far it looks like the best they will get is a continuing-funding resolution this fall. Beyond that, the view is even murkier.

In other words, the fight over Constellation could drag on into next year, during which time almost everything – and everyone – will be in limbo.