AN INTERNAL-REVIEW team has proposed restructuring NASA with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs by the year 2000. The proposals would cut spending by $5 billion and reduce NASA's civil-service workforce to 17,500, its lowest level since 1961. An estimated 25,000 contractor jobs would be axed. Under the proposals, NASA's space centres would be hardest hit.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin says that the review was instigated when NASA, already working to cut $35 billion from its budget over five years, was asked by the Government to remove an additional $5 billion.
"This is an agency designed to operate with a $22 billion budget annually, and we'll be down to $13 billion a year by the end of the decade under the Administration budget," he says.
"Reaching the levels in the Administration budget was an incredibly difficult task," he says. The US Congress is discussing deeper cuts, which Goldin says "...simply go too far", and which he is "...committed to fighting". The review proposals are scheduled to become part of NASA's fiscal year 1997 budget request, to be submitted later this year.
The "Zero-Base Review" proposes streamlining functions at NASA centres, which will become "centres of excellence", concentrating on specific aspects of the agency's mission. Flight research will be concentrated at NASA Dryden in California, which will see a 32% increase in employment as a result of taking over management of NASA's aircraft.
Other centres will sustain job reductions of between 20% and 35%. Civil-service jobs will be cut from the present level of 21,060 (already down from 24,030 in January). Of the estimated 25,000 contractor jobs to be axed, 5,000-10,000 will be eliminated by moving them to a single prime-contractor on the Space Shuttle programme, NASA says.
The agency has also opted to pull out of the Paris air show for budgetary reasons.
n A development test firing of the Ariane 5's Vulcain cryogenic engine was halted 39s before ignition at the Kourou, French Guiana space centre on 23 May.
Source: Flight International