NASA: Shuttle's end may cost 2,300 jobs in Houston NASA: Shuttle retirement may cost 2,300 jobs in Houston

Tourists pass a Saturn V exhibit at Johnson Space Center. As the date for the shuttle's retirement nears, NASA will continually revise the projected job losses. Tourists pass a Saturn V exhibit at Johnson Space Center. As the date for the shuttle's retirement nears, NASA will continually revise the projected job losses. Photo: Steve Ueckert, Chronicle File Photo: Steve Ueckert, Chronicle File Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close NASA: Shuttle's end may cost 2,300 jobs in Houston 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

As many as 2,300 people, most of them contractors, could lose their jobs at Johnson Space Center as the shuttle fleet nears retirement in two years, NASA officials predicted Tuesday.

In the first report of its kind to Congress about the expected drawdown in the space agency's work force, the officials said the reductions would come mostly from the ranks of contractors. The number of permanent civil servants would essentially remain flat.

The officials did not predict the timing of the cuts across the space agency but said that they may begin near the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in September. Between 5,800 and 7,300 workers throughout the agency would lose their jobs over the next three years.

The losses at the space agency's Clear Lake complex could amount to as few as 400 jobs through 2011 if work quickly picks up on the Constellation program, the initiative to build a successor to the shuttle for missions to the moon and Mars. That would depend on an increase in congressional funding and support by the next president.

As the date for the shuttle's retirement nears, the space agency will continually revise the projected job losses.

"This is a snapshot in time ... clearly a work in progress," said NASA spaceflight chief Bill Gerstenmaier.

"We need to be careful we don't overreact to these numbers and send an unintended message to our work force that there will be these huge drops, because we honestly don't know," Gerstenmaier said. "There are a lot of variables that need to be worked out."

Currently, Johnson Space Center employs about 16,800 workers, including those involved in the development of the next-generation spacecraft and management of space station and shuttle operations.

Retirements not factored in

About 82,000 people work at the space agency's 10 facilities in the United States, including major installations in Texas, Florida and Louisiana.

One of the best-known, Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where the shuttle is launched, faces the biggest loss. Between 5,900 and 6,800 workers, out of a work force of about 9,000, were projected to lose their jobs, even though Kennedy will also serve as the launch site for the next spacecraft.

President Bush gave NASA a new direction in the aftermath of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, the agency's second shuttle disaster, when he set NASA on a course to return to the moon. Leading an international effort, the space agency will establish a lunar base as a steppingstone to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

Bush set 2020 as the date for the first lunar mission. NASA responded by initiating the Constellation program, an agencywide effort led by Johnson Space Center to develop a combination of capsules, rockets and lunar landers.

Congress has required the space agency to update the unemployment projections every six months. Tuesday's initial estimates of job losses do not account for retirements. About 25 percent of the shuttle's work force will be eligible to retire by the time the winged ships touch down for the last time.

NASA had once planned to ground the shuttle Atlantis after a mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope later this year, but officials now are weighing whether to assign the ship additional missions to finish assembling the international space station by the mandatory retirement date.

The space agency plans to begin launches of the Orion moon capsule and Ares I rocket by March 2015 on missions carrying up to six astronauts to the space station. Work on the Orion and Ares I is led by Johnson and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Johnson would get Altair

In order to return to the moon with astronauts, NASA intends to award contracts for the Ares V, a larger rocket with a powerful upper stage, and the Altair lander.

Marshall would lead development of the Ares V and upper stage, while Johnson would supervise the Altair work.

NASA would like to select contractors for those projects in 2011.

"Our biggest threat is not showing the work force that we have a stable future, " said Rick Girbrech, a senior NASA official who joined Gerstenmaier for a news conference.

In Congress, some lawmakers are battling what they call "the gap," the five-year period between the shuttle's retirement and the inaugural flight of the moonship.

Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, whose district includes Johnson Space Center, expressed hope that a drive to give the space agency an additional $2 billion could be restarted in Congress.

"If there is a way to shorten the gap and put more money into NASA, then we should address the jobs issue," Lampson said Tuesday. "Raising this issue to a high priority will not be easy."

The jobs issue has also been under scrutiny by the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership. "It would not be fair to say there will not be a drop-off, but I don't think anyone can say it will be a major drop-off," said Bob Mitchell, the partnership's president

He predicted that commercial space companies would create jobs as NASA turns its attention to the development of a moon base.

The biggest threat to Johnson's employment, Mitchell said, would be attempts by other NASA installations to wrestle away work that has traditionally been managed in Houston.

mark.carreau@chron.com