With Boeing losing NASA will Michoud plant see layoffs?

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

An unexpected decision last week by NASA might have long-term implications for one of New Orleans’ largest high tech employers, the Michoud Space Center. Will NASA phase Boeing out of the space race?

The decision last week to bump an already scheduled astronaut crew from a Boeing Starliner vehicle in favor of a SpaceX rocket may telegraph that NASA administrators have finally tired of Boeing’s more expensive and non-reusable launch systems. And many of those large rockets are assembled at the Michoud facility in New Orleans East.

As Elon Musk’s company engineered a fully reusable rocket system with its Dragon launchers, SpaceX has won contracts for 27 missions to the International Space Station. Interestingly, 12 of those launches reused rockets, allowing Musk’s firm to undercut Boeing’s price, NASA’s traditional supplier of rockets and capsules. Commentators have speculated that the Space Agency – which has not enjoyed a significant boost in its annual budget for over 14 years – would eventually be forced to give most of its launch business to SpaceX, and perhaps similar billionaire-owned firms whose advanced technology made their rocketry cheaper.

However, NASA leadership on the civil service side, and political appointees in both the Trump and Biden administrations, have argued that both Boeing’s Starliner and SLS systems were developed cooperatively with NASA – and partially funded by the Federal Government. As such, they had no plans to replace Boeing as NASA‘s primary space contractor. That is, at least, until last week.

On October 6, NASA seemingly announced a routine astronaut reassignment. Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, who already had been assigned to crewed missions with a Boeing Starliner, will now serve as commander and pilot, respectively, of the Crew-5 SpaceX launch next year. Simply put, NASA seems to have decided that the problem-riddled spacecraft was just taking too long.

Both Starliner and the entire “Space Launch System” (SLS) stand years behind in development schedules, and countless millions over their original budget estimates. Put simply, if SpaceX’s rockets had not come into service as quickly as they had, NASA might still be reliant on Russian Soyuz launchers to bring astronauts to the International Space Station.

However, if NASA does abandon the entire Boeing design, the decision would have massive implications for the Michoud Space Center (as well as potentially the nearby Stennis). The Michoud rocket assembly center, one of the largest unobstructed buildings under one roof in the United States, undertook the final stage of construction of everything from the Saturn 5 rockets that launched the Apollo program to the moon to the external fuel tanks for the space shuttles. It is a government-owned facility that is heavily reliant on Boeing products being constructed within.

Elon Musk has no use for it. The billionaire owns his own private assembly center in Brownsville, Texas. Nor does Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin or any of the other space contenders. If Boeing loses the NASA contracts for space launch systems, hundreds of jobs at Michoud could be eliminated as well.

In a strange sort of way, as an NASA insider explained it to The Louisiana Weekly, the problem that Boeing has encountered in building Starliner and the SLS have come “Because Boeing has embraced the NASA philosophy of having no failures”.

If ever there was an explosion or a problem, NASA would see a budget cut in a years-long delay in a space program. Boeing likewise became equally risk-averse. That has caused good engineering concepts to drag on for years testing and careful study. In contrast, Elon Musk tested his rockets on the launch pad, and if one blew up, he just started over a few days later. In the end, the billionaire’s willingness to take large gambles ultimately made his system infinitely cheaper, and just as safe for the current astronauts.

This article originally published in the October 11, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.