W00t, bring on the tech boom for NOLA!!New Orleans gets a boost from NASA
By ALAN SAYRE, AP Business Writer Mon Dec 24, 11:29 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS - The route to the moon and perhaps to Mars now goes through New Orleans — and the detour couldn't come at a better time in the city's struggle to rebuild its shattered economy after Hurricane Katrina.
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With thousands of houses still in ruins and its population reduced by almost 170,000, a boost is on the way for New Orleans in the form of high-wage jobs and contracts for next-generation space systems at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility.
Before the storm, New Orleans' economy thrived on low-wage tourism. But the $156 million payroll at Michoud — some salaries are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — generates paychecks significantly above the city's median annual income of about $27,000.
Michoud, in the city's eastern section, had a cloudy future before the storm struck in August 2005: The space shuttle fuel tanks it used to turn out won't be needed after the shuttle program ends in 2010, and there was no sure replacement for one of the region's largest payrolls.
The outlook is much brighter now that three contracts associated with NASA's Constellation program have landed this year and last at Michoud. James Bray, director of Lockheed Martin's Orion project at Michoud, called the facility "a sleeping giant" for the New Orleans economy.
"It's been a jewel that a lot of people pass on the interstate and don't really realize is here," Bray said. "But if you look at the population of New Orleans and Slidell and along the Gulf Coast, you find very technical, qualified people that come into here and make the space program go."
Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin will build the Orion crew module at the 43-acre plant. And Chicago-based Boeing Co. will build the $1.13 billion upper stage of the Ares I launch rocket and the rocket's $799.5 million navigation and control system there.
With 2,400 workers, Michoud is an economic force in a section of the city that was hit hard by Katrina and has been slow to recover.
"For New Orleans east, it's one of the big players. If you look around at who has the number of jobs, and the number of high paying jobs, you're not going to find much in New Orleans east that's even going to come close," said Louisiana State University economist Loren Scott.
"This type of facility that uses high-wage, high-skill jobs tends to create other types of jobs."
At the height of the shuttle program in the 1980s before the Challenger disaster, the facility had about 5,000 employees. It's unclear what the employment level will be once the shuttle program ends. About 200 employees have joined Lockheed's Orion program, and the payroll's expected to number 500 within two years. Boeing has said it expects several hundred workers to be at Michoud for its contracts.
The first test flight of Orion will occur in 2014 and astronauts could return to the moon by late 2019 or 2020 with possible later missions to Mars, NASA says.
Like the shuttle program, Constellation's economic impact could last decades even if it creates fewer jobs.
And space may not be the only frontier for Michoud, which built cargo planes during World War II and tank engines during the Korean War — as well as the Saturn rockets for the Apollo and Skylab space programs.
The National Center for Advanced Manufacturing, an 8-year-old partnership of NASA and the state of Louisiana, has developed new welding and fabrication techniques at Michoud for lightweight composite materials.
"If you look at the aerospace industry in general, they're booked to capacity," Bray said. "Having the equipment here and available in Louisiana, it makes sense to put more work into this location, which will bring in more jobs."
Marco Caceras, a space industry analyst with Teal Group Inc., a Fairfax, Va.-based aerospace and defense consulting firm, said that even after the shuttle program ends, the United States will — at a minimum — need a way to ferry crew and cargo to the space station.
"The program likely will be tweaked in the future, but it will remain robust," Caceras said.
Michoud also recently gained a voice in Washington in the form of U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who has been appointed the top-ranking member of the Senate subcommittee with space program oversight, replacing outgoing Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., at year's end.
Michoud workers are excited about the future.
Robert Campbell, senior manager of production integration for Lockheed Martin, has been at Michoud since 1974 and looks forward to a repeat of the pioneering days.
"Looking at Orion, this is more of a challenge to us because the agenda is to go back to the moon," he said. "We're back to the days of where we were with Gemini and Apollo. A lot of people don't know how big the Orion program is and what it can do for us here."
Melissa Brooks, who's worked a month on the shuttle tank's foam insulation system and hopes to stay for future projects. Her father has worked at Michoud for 26 years.
"I do plan on retiring here," she said.
The Road to the Moon, Mars, and Worlds Beyond...
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Is it wise for NASA to long-term invest in NOLA, given rising sea levels and increasing hurricane activity in the Gulf?
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You mean the same people who built the Vehicle Assembly Building on a barrier island in the most hurricane prone state in the US?Surlethe wrote:Is it wise for NASA to long-term invest in NOLA, given rising sea levels and increasing hurricane activity in the Gulf?
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Okay genius, name a better fucking spot. In case your smarter then NASA genius brain didn’t know, you gain a significant fuel saving (and thus saving of money and overall rocket weigh) launching shit into orbit the closer to the equator you get. You also need to have a huge empty area down range for broken rockets to fall onto, as in an ocean or in the case of the main Soviet space base a huge desert. So please, do point out a very large plot of flat ground in as far south in the US as possible with the ocean directly adjoining to the east which is not exposed to hurricanes.Flagg wrote: You mean the same people who built the Vehicle Assembly Building on a barrier island in the most hurricane prone state in the US?
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Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?Sea Skimmer wrote:Okay genius, name a better fucking spot. In case your smarter then NASA genius brain didn’t know, you gain a significant fuel saving (and thus saving of money and overall rocket weigh) launching shit into orbit the closer to the equator you get. You also need to have a huge empty area down range for broken rockets to fall onto, as in an ocean or in the case of the main Soviet space base a huge desert. So please, do point out a very large plot of flat ground in as far south in the US as possible with the ocean directly adjoining to the east which is not exposed to hurricanes.Flagg wrote: You mean the same people who built the Vehicle Assembly Building on a barrier island in the most hurricane prone state in the US?
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Or hey, how about Hawaii?Flagg wrote:Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?Sea Skimmer wrote:Okay genius, name a better fucking spot. In case your smarter then NASA genius brain didn’t know, you gain a significant fuel saving (and thus saving of money and overall rocket weigh) launching shit into orbit the closer to the equator you get. You also need to have a huge empty area down range for broken rockets to fall onto, as in an ocean or in the case of the main Soviet space base a huge desert. So please, do point out a very large plot of flat ground in as far south in the US as possible with the ocean directly adjoining to the east which is not exposed to hurricanes.Flagg wrote: You mean the same people who built the Vehicle Assembly Building on a barrier island in the most hurricane prone state in the US?
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Seismically active.Flagg wrote:Or hey, how about Hawaii?Flagg wrote:Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?Sea Skimmer wrote: Okay genius, name a better fucking spot. In case your smarter then NASA genius brain didn’t know, you gain a significant fuel saving (and thus saving of money and overall rocket weigh) launching shit into orbit the closer to the equator you get. You also need to have a huge empty area down range for broken rockets to fall onto, as in an ocean or in the case of the main Soviet space base a huge desert. So please, do point out a very large plot of flat ground in as far south in the US as possible with the ocean directly adjoining to the east which is not exposed to hurricanes.
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True, forgot about that.SirNitram wrote:Seismically active.Flagg wrote:Or hey, how about Hawaii?Flagg wrote: Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?
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Since that's never been a problem I think you're overstating your case. I suppose they could've put a civilian launch site adjacent to Vandenburg.Flagg wrote: Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?
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"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi in reply to an incredibly stupid post.
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Cape Canaveral is on the 28th parallel, which happens to run through south Texas but not any one of the states you mentioned. The furthest south you can get in Arizona is on the 31st parallel. What’s more, most of the the good empty areas in the US south west had ALREADY been taken up by US military bombing ranges, nuclear testing grounds and test grounds for much smaller rockets then those NASA expected to use the cape for. You would not have anything like the ocean for bad rockets to fall into, a rocket that failed a few minutes into flight is going to drop right down into the heavily populated US Midwest.Flagg wrote: Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?
The US does in fact have a space base at Vandenberg AFB right on the California coast, which is used for launches which require polar orbits. Low and behold that trajectory combined with the location of the base means that the rockets flying right out over the ocean within seconds of launch. That kind of orbit is almost only needed by military spacecraft anyway, though NASA does use the place from time to time. What’s more NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral also happens to have the US militaries own Cape Canaveral Air Force Station right next it to, which actually has far more rocket launch pads then the NASA complex.
So yeah, you fail. The best sites are what we are using now and the danger from Hurricanes has never been that great. Whatever money has been spent on repairing damage is highly unlikely to have been more then the added cost of building every single rocket we’ve ever shot off from Cape Canaveral bigger and heavier. It was not a fucking bunch of idiots who decided to build these places.
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Never been a problem? The VAB sustained damage from 2 hurricanes in 2004.Illuminatus Primus wrote:Since that's never been a problem I think you're overstating your case. I suppose they could've put a civilian launch site adjacent to Vandenburg.Flagg wrote: Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?
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I'll concede that at the time it was built it was likely the best place.Sea Skimmer wrote:Cape Canaveral is on the 28th parallel, which happens to run through south Texas but not any one of the states you mentioned. The furthest south you can get in Arizona is on the 31st parallel. What’s more, most of the the good empty areas in the US south west had ALREADY been taken up by US military bombing ranges, nuclear testing grounds and test grounds for much smaller rockets then those NASA expected to use the cape for. You would not have anything like the ocean for bad rockets to fall into, a rocket that failed a few minutes into flight is going to drop right down into the heavily populated US Midwest.Flagg wrote: Umm, Arizona? New Mexico? Southeastern California? You know, places that don't get hurricanes all the fucking time?
The US does in fact have a space base at Vandenberg AFB right on the California coast, which is used for launches which require polar orbits. Low and behold that trajectory combined with the location of the base means that the rockets flying right out over the ocean within seconds of launch. That kind of orbit is almost only needed by military spacecraft anyway, though NASA does use the place from time to time. What’s more NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral also happens to have the US militaries own Cape Canaveral Air Force Station right next it to, which actually has far more rocket launch pads then the NASA complex.
So yeah, you fail. The best sites are what we are using now and the danger from Hurricanes has never been that great. Whatever money has been spent on repairing damage is highly unlikely to have been more then the added cost of building every single rocket we’ve ever shot off from Cape Canaveral bigger and heavier. It was not a fucking bunch of idiots who decided to build these places.
We pissing our pants yet?
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Yeah, thank God we've annexed Mexico, won't make that mistake again.Flagg wrote:I'll concede that at the time it was built it was likely the best place.
"You know what the problem with Hollywood is. They make shit. Unbelievable. Unremarkable. Shit." - Gabriel Shear, Swordfish
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi in reply to an incredibly stupid post.
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"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi in reply to an incredibly stupid post.
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[quote="Illuminatus PrimusYeah, thank God we've annexed Mexico.[/quote]
Yet.
Probably wouldnt be a bad idea though... and not just for NASA
Yet.
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