A ROCKETSHIP RELAUNCH FOR THE JOHNSON SPACE CENTER? 
Construction of the new Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the first new NASA spacecraft built for manned orbit since 1991, began earlier this week — in New Orleans (photo). And final assembly will take place in Florida. But a “senior administration official” tells space-beat reporter Todd Halvorson that the new 30-story tall Space Launch System for Orion that NASA is announcing today — with the strong support of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison — will provide a “stable future” for Houston’s Johnson Space Center and 3 other human-space-flight facilities around the country. [Florida Today; NASA] Photo: NASA
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My prayer: that we’ll one day be able to afford this.
without entitlement reform we won’t be able to afford anything in the future so it really doesn’t even matter if we can or can’t.
but good news for the space center regardless. luckily we have the oil & gas industry here to aggressively court any displaced engineers but they can’t abosorb any of the others positions that make the place run.
It would be interesting know what portions of the program would be given to JSC. I’m assuming mostly those related to astronaut preparation. The engines will likely be built in Alabama after all and the superstructure will probably be built in California and/or Florida. At the end of the day JSC and the Houston space industry is always going to be more at risk of cuts because it is not focused on the design and manufacture of the hardware, particularly the hardware that can also be used for non-manned space purposes. Look at Boeing’s announcement yesterday of its $1B satellite deal with the Pentagon that will all go to El Segundo for example.