I got an email today, that I thought I’d just publish:

People don’t seem to be to sympathetic to the workers who will lose their jobs with the loss of the shuttle and Constellation. If I understand you correctly, neither program should be continued just for jobs. I tend to agree with that, however, what should be done to help the people who will lose their jobs?

It would be interesting to know more about the employment situation, what type of jobs will be lost, how easy or hard it will be for workers to find new jobs, and if the government has any ideas on helping these people find work.

Do you think that there will be skilled workers who will now start their own space related companies?

Any insights would be appreciated.

Others may have better insight than I. But I would note that generally, if some event results in a loss of jobs in an area with a jobs shortage, people tend to have to move. It’s a very tough time for those losing NASA-related jobs, because it’s a tough job market out there. On the other hand, a lot of people are hurting, and might even resent the notion that there’s something special about space jobs that those losing them should get special treatment.

This may in fact have been an historical high-water mark for space-related Brevard County employment, and the end of a half-century era, when the region boomed due to a fortunate happenstance of geography. But the fundamental problem of space is the high cost of access to it. And in principle, if not practice, the purpose of NASA spending should not be job creation, but wealth or knowledge creation. If we are to reduce the costs of space transportation, we need to either reduce the number of people who work on it (because their paychecks and benefits are where the vast majority of those costs come from) or dramatically increase their productivity. Neither Shuttle or Constellation offered any prospects for doing that. Commercial might, in the longer run, but it’s not going to do anything to help the current NASA work force.

And if we develop the kinds of vehicles that we need for true significant cost reduction (fully reusable), there’s nothing magic about the Cape, in terms of launch location. So I don’t expect to ever see the levels of space employment there again that we saw from the Cold-War-legacy program. That’s a reality with which the local officials are simply going to have to come to grips.

Rick Tumlinson says that’s what Chris Dodd’s proposed financial legislation is. And it’s not a problem just for space startups — this could put an end to Silicon Valley as we know it. For those who aren’t Obama worshippers, as Rick is (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), you might want to skip the first graf — it doesn’t really contribute much to the main point.