Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA) January 17, 2004
Michoud may be in for rough landing
Quest to replace shuttle work likely to be daunting task
By Keith Darce
If the Michoud plant in eastern New Orleans is to have a life beyond the end of the space shuttle program in 2010, local officials will have to persuade NASA, the White House and top defense contractors that the plant should play a major role in President Bush's new space plan.
Michoud supporters say the plant already has proven its worthiness by building more than 120 towering external fuel tanks for the shuttle fleet over the past three decades.
But the facility, which employs about 2,000 people and is operated by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, can't rest on its laurels, warn some NASA officials and space industry observers.
And even under the most optimistic scenarios, it could take several years for NASA to start building a new space vehicle after the shuttles are retired. That sort of gap in production activity could force massive layoffs at Michoud.
"You'd better turn the lights off," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington research group on military and space issues that has criticized Bush's plan.
"There may be nothing to build in the first half of the next decade," he said, meaning from about 2010 to 2015.
A big loss of jobs at Michoud would deal a significant blow to the region's economy. Though employment at the plant has fallen significantly since peaking around 5,000 in the mid-1980s, it still supplies some of the highest-paying manufacturing jobs in the region.
"The average salary is about $35,000 a year. Those kinds of jobs are often difficult to create," said Tommy Kurtz, vice president of economic development for Greater New Orleans Inc., formerly the Greater New Orleans Chamber of Commerce.
Michoud's odds of winning future work from NASA also could be hurt by the plant's limited range of specialized skills and by a declining influence of Louisiana's congressional delegation, which will take a hit at the end of this year when Sen. John Breaux, D-La., retires and Rep. David Vitter, R-Metairie, leaves the House of Representatives and his seat on the highly-influential Appropriations Committee.
With Bush's new proposal calling for an end to the space shuttle program nearly a decade earlier than previous plans, the clock already is ticking for Michoud to find a new line of work.
Bush earlier this week announced that NASA will refocus on returning astronauts to the moon as early as 2015. Once a permanent base is established there, the agency will begin working on human missions to Mars.
The three-vehicle shuttle fleet, which has been grounded since the loss of Columbia last February, will be retired when work on the International Space Station is completed around 2010.
The shuttles will be replaced by a new crew exploration vehicle that will blast into space on a multi-stage rocket, similar to the capsule-rocket vehicles used to send Americans to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
Another factor driving the retirement of the shuttles is a mandate from the federal board that investigated the Columbia tragedy ordering NASA to re-certify the orbiters if the agency wants to fly them beyond 2010. Re-certification would be costly to accomplish and could ground the fleet for several years.
Under Bush's plan, work at Michoud on external tanks could end before 2010 because the plant typically operates on a production schedule that is more than a year ahead of NASA's shuttle flight schedule.
There is little chance that Michoud alone will get the job of building the new space vehicle.
"I don't think any one facility will likely build a majority of (NASA's next generation space vehicle system)," Vitter said Friday. "A lot of facilities will be involved in pieces of it."
Given the plant's expertise in fuel tank construction and composite materials, it's more likely that Michoud will be tapped to build fuel tanks for the new space vehicle or for a new rocket.
That's what happened several years ago when Michoud built a pair of composite-material, liquid-hydrogen fuel tanks for the X-33, a small, capsule-like experimental space vehicle built by Lockheed for NASA.
Other components of the X-33 were built by other Lockheed facilities, and the craft was assembled at the company's Skunk Works plant in Palmdale, Calif.
NASA managers said this week that the new vehicle will be similar to the X-33, which was canceled several years ago.
But Lockheed will face stiff competition from its chief rival, Boeing Corp., to build the new craft.
Even if Lockheed wins that battle and Michoud gets the job of building the vehicle's fuel tanks, the tanks would be considerably smaller than the 154-foot-long external tanks used by the shuttle and likely would require fewer production workers to build. Each tank has a 27.6-foot diameter.
The entire X-33 vehicle, which was built at half the scale of what the final version would have been, was 69 feet long and 77 feet wide.
Perhaps the best scenario for Michoud would be a decision by NASA to build a new generation of powerful rockets similar to the Saturn rockets that carried the Apollo and Gemini capsules to space.
But that will not happen anytime soon.
NASA wants to use existing Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets during the early stages of the new space exploration program. Lockheed makes the Atlas rocket at plants in Denver and San Diego. Michoud hasn't made rocket components since the early 1970s, when it crafted large pieces of the Saturn 5's.
Though a new, more powerful rocket might be needed to establish a permanent base on the moon, that won't happen for at least another decade.
If new rockets are eventually ordered, there is little chance that Lockheed would relocate significant parts of its existing rocket manufacturing operations to Michoud, said Steven Schneider, an aerospace engineer and an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
"I just can't imagine them opening a new production line or shifting that work," he said.
The head of space craft development for Lockheed said this week that Michoud would play some sort of role in any new construction program won by the company from NASA, but the plant's participation would be limited to its current areas of expertise.
"When it comes to structures, Michoud has the expertise. You have capabilities there that are fairly unique. We certainly want to take advantage of that," said Mike Coats, Lockheed's vice president of advanced space transportation.
"Michoud has world-class expertise in building tanks, and we intend to use that," he said.
Other vehicle components would be built at other company facilities, Coats said. "We want to build pieces where it makes the most sense," he said.
Echoing comments made by city and state officials earlier this week, Vitter said NASA and the federal government have invested too much in Michoud and its work force to abandon them.
"We have enormous skills sets and assets at Michoud that have been built up over decades, including an enormous facility and equipment," the congressman said. "That is an enormous advantage that we have."
But Pike, the space issues research organization director, said it would be a mistake for local officials to take Michoud and its assets for granted.
"I don't think they will tear the buildings down, but one can easily see that there will be periods where there is nobody there but maintenance crews," he said.
Inevitably, politics will play a role in the decisions made by NASA and its contractors over the coming years.
That was the case in the early 1970s when NASA decided to build the shuttle external fuel tanks in New Orleans.
At the time, Louisiana's congressional delegation -- which included House Speaker Hale Boggs, Sens. Allen Ellender and Russell Long, and Rep. F. Edward Hebert -- exerted considerable influence in Washington.
The influence of the state's modern delegation has been waning since Rep. Bob Livingston gave up a sure shot at becoming House speaker and resigned after admitting marital infidelities.
More hits will come later this year when Breaux, the dean of the delegation, retires and Vitter gives up his seat in the House to run for the vacated Senate seat.
Michoud's long-term prospects could be hurt if decisions about Bush's new space plan aren't made quickly, said Livingston, who now works as a lobbyist in Washington.
"It depends on when the battle formulates," Livingston said. "I say, if we are going to do it, let's fight now rather than next year. But I'm afraid that isn't our call."
Livingston and others said local officials have been working for several years on a plan for finding new work for Michoud once the shuttle program ended.
At the center of that plan is the National Center for Advanced Manufacturing, a venture by Lockheed, NASA and a consortium of universities led by the University of New Orleans that hopes to develop new materials for use in aerospace, defense and other needs.
Kurtz, of Greater New Orleans Inc., described the center as the future "anchor" of the region's aerospace industry.
The center's first job is creating composite material parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being built by Lockheed for the Pentagon.
But it's unclear how successful the center will be in attracting more work and creating new jobs in the region.
The center's director, Bruce Brailsford, did not return numerous phone messages for comments on this report.
Some space industry observers question whether any new manned-space vehicles will result from Bush's new space strategy, considering the paltry amount of new money being given to NASA to begin the programs and the historic failure of long-range space programs in this country.
Bush said he will ask Congress to add only $1 billion for NASA over the next five years. Much of the money for the new programs will come from shuffling $11 billion inside the agency's $16 billion annual budget.
Pike said Bush's funding request will allow NASA to do little more than study the proposal over the next few years.
"I am not sure this initiative will go beyond a Powerpoint presentation," he said.
One thing seems certain, however.
Space shuttle flights, and external tank production at Michoud, will end once the International Space Station is completed.
Schneider, the aerospace engineering professor at Purdue, said it's hard to imagine much of a need for new spacecraft manufacturing after the shuttle fleet is retired.
"I wouldn't buy a lot of stock in Michoud," he said.
© Copyright 2004, The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
