An Unlikely Victim of Space Shuttle's Demise: Florida's Economy

By Stuart Fox Posted 12.10.2009 at 2:00 pm 14 Comments

Blast Off, Cash Off? courtesy of NASA

Journalists have already spilled gallons of ink and hogged terabytes of bandwidth with stories about the implications of switching from the Space Shuttle to the new Constellation system. Of course, most of the reporting has focused on the impact to NASA, thus ignoring another somewhat unlikely victim of the gap between the two programs: the economy of Florida.

Florida, already reeling from the collapse of the housing market and the effects of the Great Recession, faces a serious loss of revenue from both the evaporation of tourists who come to watch the launches, and from the potential relocating of NASA personnel related to the Shuttle program away from the Kennedy Space Center. In total, the NASA activities contribute around $4 billion a year to Florida's economy, or about 0.5 percent of total state GDP. With Florida's GDP contracting in 2008, and set to plummet even more in 2009, this lost revenue could impact the state just as it begins to recover.

The gap between the end of the Space Shuttle program and the beginning of Constellation could see as many as 8,000 NASA employees let go or relocated. And considering the average NASA employee at the Kennedy Space Center makes $77,235 a year, roughly twice the average for the county, that loss could have economic ripples throughout the state.

Florida already experienced a similar problem in 1975, when the end of the Apollo program reduced employment around the Kennedy Space Center to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

And unfortunately, the activation of the Constellation spaceships may not revive the local economy. Even though the Kennedy Space Center remains the designated launching site for the Constellation program, recent budget cuts, and a reevaluation of NASA priorities, indicate that the Constellation program may end up far less ambitious than the Shuttle program. Those cuts may leave even an active Kennedy Space Center with far less economic power than it currently projects.

[Reuters]

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14 Comments

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animemaster

12/10/09 at 2:12 pm

Meh- florida will be under the ocean soon so who really cares. Might as well kill florida off nice and quick its kinder than letting it slowly suffer and eventually drowned.

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scienceguy2

12/10/09 at 3:09 pm

I find your comment offensive animemaster, for I live in Florida and care about it very much. The NASA program is very important to the U.S and a signature of Florida. Why else would they have a space shuttle on the Florida quarter?

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chendrix89

12/10/09 at 4:34 pm

Does anyone else find it ridiculous that this would cause the "collapse" of the Florida economy?

0.5% of total state GDP?
That's 1/200th. I'm sure a 0.5% cut in expenditures can be arranged.

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animemaster

12/10/09 at 4:37 pm

They didn't they put it in California and Florida the calli base just got cut early on you guys took a little longer. I still think we should have launched it from a high altitude desertish area like the Russians did. A lot of the delays and havoc with the space shuttle are due to Florida's fickle weather.

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scienceguy2

12/10/09 at 6:30 pm

Launching from a state other than Florida would waste fuel because of the trajectory the Shuttle takes to get to the ISS. If you launched it from a site like Utah or Nevada then you would waste thousands of gallons of fuel trying to "catch up" to the ISS

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blaxpear

12/10/09 at 7:24 pm

I doubt it will kill Florida. Besides it's time to retire the whole space shuttle program. At $500 Million a launch it just doesn't make sense given the modern alternatives we now have. It's time NASA looks at the private sector... and I don't mean Boeing/Lockheed/etc... they are the reason it costs soo much.

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chaosdivine

12/11/09 at 12:59 am

I recently returned from my visit to Florida to watch the STS-129 launch and for a multi-day tour of Kennedy Space Centre. It was truly amazing and I feel privileged to have seen the launch and the rich history of the space program. The people I met were all extremely friendly and are really lucky to live in such a wonderful area. That being said, there was evidence that the recession was hitting them hard. Lots of places were closed and boarded up. Lots of retail space available. Lots of for sale signs dotted the landscape. Lines at Busch gardens were non-existent too. I know its low season, but still, the deals we got on our trip were incredible. Everyone was vying for our dollars. Even the KSC tour operators were saying how worried they were that their jobs would become redundant once the Space Shuttle program drew to a close. This is a VERY big topic down there. I wish them all best but rest assured, I will return in the future. It was THAT good of a place to visit.

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chieffranky

12/11/09 at 4:48 am

I plan on moving to florida once I graduate and I'm not too worried about the economy there.With my high paying and fundamental undergraduate's degree in psychology, what grocery store wouldn't want to hire me?

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Craigboy

12/11/09 at 4:52 am

Why can't the workers just re-used, what are the majority of jobs being laid off?

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Azorus

12/11/09 at 10:08 am

Of course the economy would take a hit, that's a duh on the states side for not realizing that NASA brought a crap load of money into the florida economy. But still why can't the state make a buget cut to make up for the short fall? Maybe it is because the politicians don't want less money for there not so important job.

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QIII

12/11/09 at 3:43 pm

"Why else would they have a space shuttle on the Florida quarter?"

The energy expenditure required to get a massive object into orbit on or near the equatorial plane?

Why do you suppose the French launch spacecraft from the Centre Spatial Guyanais instead of some place in Lorraine?

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QIII

12/11/09 at 3:44 pm

"Why else would they have a space shuttle on the Florida quarter?"

The energy expenditure required to get a massive object into orbit on or near the equatorial plane?

Why do you suppose the French launch spacecraft from the Centre Spatial Guyanais instead of some place in Lorraine?

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riff_raff

12/23/09 at 9:56 pm

Each Shuttle launch costs US taxpayers almost 1/2 billion dollars, and frankly provides no real return for that expenditure. The Shuttle program has become nothing more than an expensive federal welfare program for a few aerospace companies and some federal government bureaucrats.

The article fails to consider what benefit the overall US economy would gain if that $4 billion was left in taxpayers pockets instead of being frittered away on some scientifically questionable NASA boondoggle in Florida.

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