by David Royse
The News Service of Florida
With the launch Friday of the Space Shuttle Atlantis from the Kennedy Space Center, the last of the 30-year-old American shuttle program, Florida’s central Atlantic coast looked into an uncertain future that some fear may be an economic abyss.
The shuttle program has fueled the economy of Florida’s Space Coast like a solid rocket booster since the vehicle first flew in the early 1980s.
The area has been through a massive downturn before. After the end of the Apollo program, which launched the moon shots of the nation’s early space endeavor, Titusville, Cocoa Beach and other Brevard County towns essentially went into a slumber until the shuttle came along.
Local boosters say times are different now. The area is more diversified, with a heavy defense industry presence that’s not related directly to space, and a coming commercial space industry focus that already has more rocket launches lined up at the Cape than there were shuttle launches in recent years.
But nobody thinks the next couple of years are going to be great in the community built around the space industry, now that the government’s main vehicle will be offline.
Rep. Ritch Workman is relatively optimistic that things won’t be too terrible. He can give the local booster line about all the positives in the area. But he admits, it will be a challenging period.
“I don’t believe the sidewalks are going to roll up as they did after the Apollo program,” said Workman (R-Melbourne). “It’s not as grim as some would have you believe.”
Already 6,000 of the workers at the private company United Space Alliance, which is contracted to do much of the shuttle work, have already been laid off.
By the time the program is completed, about 9,000 direct shuttle program workers will have been laid off, local officials have said.
But with the space program dominating the local economy, that will spill out in waves through Brevard County, economists fear.
“It has enormous downstream effects,” said Orlando economist Hank Fishkind of Fishkind & Associates. The shuttle workers are highly paid, so they spend lots of money in the local economy. Also, the program itself buys local goods and services.
NASA spent nearly $2 billion a year in Brevard County, with far smaller amounts being spent in other nearby Central Florida counties. But most of the spending by far has been concentrated right at the Cape, which means the pain won’t be dispersed, either.
Huge numbers of people in the area are touched by the change, even those who don’t come anywhere near a launch pad.
“I own a mortgage company. You don’t think I’m worried?” said Workman.
The shuttle program’s end, said Fishkind, is “a terrible economic blow. There’s just no good from an economic sense.”
Local officials have been working hard to counter that view and to try to diversify the economy, with the acknowledgement that private space ventures won’t immediately absorb all the laid-off workers.
“We don’t have anybody to pick up 3,000 employees,” said Workman. “We have plenty of people to pick up 20 here or 42 there.”
Still, Workman notes the dramatic change in the area from when Apollo was shut down at the end of 1972.