CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Workers at the Kennedy Space Center always knew the end of the shuttle program would bring hard times to Florida’s space coast.
They just couldn’t predict how much pain.
About 7,000 jobs are being cut, and potential replacement positions evaporated last year when President Barack Obama scrapped plans to return astronauts to the moon.
Soon-to-be-jobless space workers and those who’ve already lost their jobs are now competing for work in a labor market where more than one in 10 is unemployed.
And the area is still reeling from the housing crisis, making it tougher for workers to sell their homes and move elsewhere for a job.
“Everything is taking a turn for the worst, it seems like,” said Kevin Smith, local president of the union for space center firefighters, paramedics and workers at emergency landing sites. “What little is out there, everybody is competing for.”
The region has faced dire times before: There was a gap between the end of NASA’s Apollo program in the mid-1970s and the first shuttle launch in 1981. But at least space workers and businesses had the shuttle to look forward to.
No such program exists for workers like engineer Tony Crisafulli, who will be laid off two days after Atlantis returns from the last shuttle mission in July.
“We’re all out here working, knowing that we’re losing our jobs in a few days,” said Crisafulli, who has been at the space center for nearly 23 years.
Space workers had been looking to the Constellation moon program to cushion the blow from the shuttle program’s end. The cancellation of that project eliminated 2,000 jobs.
“We were all counting on that to take us through the transition,” Crisafulli said. “At least, that was something.”
The Obama administration’s space plan has NASA building a new capsule and giant rocket to take astronauts to an asteroid and, eventually, Mars. It relies on private companies to build their own spacecraft to fly cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.
The local jobs agency estimates that NASA infuses $1.2 billion into Florida’s economy, and that two jobs are lost for each aerospace job that is eliminated.
At the height of the shuttle program, Kennedy Space Center had 17,000 employees who mostly worked for private contractors. After the shuttles retire, there will be a little over 8,500. They’ll wrap up the shuttle program and prepare the orbiters for museums, work on unmanned launches and develop and test the new space capsule.
Restaurants and businesses already are feeling the belt-tightening as residents stay home to save money. After July, it will be a long while before hotels are booked up as they are for shuttle launches. Hundreds of thousands of spectators pour into Brevard County, ordinarily home to a half-million residents.
“Everyone is starting to feel the pinch. People are not working. They’re economizing,” said Donna Thrash, who runs a jobs workshop for space workers at Brevard Workforce, the county’s career center. “Every launch, this area is full of people, and everyone benefits from that. Once that’s gone, it’s going to really hit people that that isn’t coming anymore.”
The region had years to prepare for the end of the space shuttle. But the announcement in 2004 occurred in a different era — a time when Florida’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, the housing boom was fueling construction growth and the area had the highest property values in central Florida. Now, unemployment is at 10.6 percent, growth has disappeared and for-sale signs dot neighborhoods.
Final shuttle mission
Primary payload: Raffaello Multi-purpose Logistics Module, which is filled with supplies and spare parts for the international space station
Launch date: Friday
Launch time: 9:26 a.m. MDT
Launch site: Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A
Landing date: July 20
Landing time: 5:06 a.m. MDT
Landing site: Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility
Source: NASA
