Boeing contract to add 250 jobs in N.O.

BYLINE: GARY PERILLOUX; Advocate business writer;

Boeing won a billion-dollar rocket contract Tuesday that will create 250 new jobs at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

Assembly will begin there in late 2008 after a team of 700 designers and support staff in Huntsville, Ala., create the specifications for the Ares 1 upper-stage rocket, the critical core of NASA's Constellation program to take manned space flights back to the moon.

"This is the big milestone," NASA administrator Doug Cooke said in announcing the next-to-last component of the Constellation space vehicle. It consists of an Orion crew exploration vehicle, or capsule; an Ares I upper-stage rocket to be built in New Orleans; a rocket booster; and an engine.

The final piece, an avionics instrument system, will be awarded in December.

NASA targets unmanned Constellation test flights by 2009, the end of the space shuttle program in 2010, a manned flight to the International Space Station in late 2013, a moon landing by 2020 and an eventual voyage to Mars.

For the Ares 1 upper-stage rocket, Boeing won a $515 million definite contract Tuesday, but NASA included options for up to 23 upper stages that could bring the total value to $1.125 billion through 2017.

Boeing will work at Michoud in much the same way that auto plants work.

"We contemplate doing this job by having our supply chain deliver directly to Michoud, and we'll deliver our final assembly from there," said Jim Chilton, the Huntsville-based Ares I Boeing program manager.

Summa Technology, for instance, will build large metal panels in Huntsville that will be welded together into Ares tankage at Michoud, he said.

Chilton said Boeing advance teams would be working in New Orleans within months, a year before formal assembly begins.

Here's how other major Constellation parts are being developed:

- Lockheed Martin will engineer the Orion capsule, a $3.9 billion contract, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston with components built at facilities across the country and final assembly in Florida.

- Near Brigham City, Utah, Alliant Techsystems will craft and test the first rocket booster stage in a $1.8 billion deal.

- At Canoga Park in southern California, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is building J-2X engines that will power the upper-stage rockets and be housed in the assembly developed at Michoud.

- Finally, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the units will be stacked in a final assembly step prior to flights.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville oversees the Michoud facility in New Orleans, where about 4,000 people work in a host of aerospace, government and university research roles.

Lockheed Martin, which defeated Boeing for the lucrative Orion capsule contract, is building external fuel tanks for the final space shuttle missions. Its Orion project is expected to create 1,200 new jobs in Houston while Lockheed Martin employment in New Orleans has dropped from about 2,500 in the mid-1990s to about 1,800 today.

Chilton deferred to NASA on how many Ares jobs Boeing would create, saying the figure would be in the low triple-digits.

NASA's Danny Davis, speaking in a Web cast from Washington, D.C., hit the direct number.

"In the Louisiana and Mississippi area, we probably will peak out around 250 or so," said Davis, NASA's upper-stage element manager. "We've yet to have our complete manufacturing plan in place, but the first work will be done at the Marshall Space Flight Center and then we'll transfer our work down there in the late '08-'09 time frame."

Former astronaut Scott "Doc" Horowitz, who's leading the latest space exploration program, said NASA is one contract away from having "a complete transportation system that will carry our astronauts to orbit."

Boeing also is a bidder on the avionics contract that will provide guidance systems for the upper-stage rocket. Boeing last worked at Michoud in the 1960s and 1970s on Saturn rockets for the Apollo mission.

The Michoud site has a storied history of accomplishment, with the 43 acres under one roof making up one of the world's largest manufacturing facilities and successfully fueling dozens of NASA flights. One incident that marred the record came in 2003, when an investigation concluded that a piece of foam that broke away from a fuel tank caused the space shuttle Columbia crash.

On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's second anniversary, NASA officials reiterated their commitment to Michoud, and the nearby Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi, where engine components will be tested for the next space mission.

"Clearly, there was a lot of devastation on the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast," NASA Ares project manager Steve Cook said.

Stennis and Michoud will "have critical roles in the Constellation program, and the work force there has done an outstanding job through personal hardships," he said. "NASA is committed to staying in the New Orleans area and bringing in new projects."

Louisiana economic development Secretary Michael Olivier congratulated Boeing in a statement and said his department is pursuing additional technology jobs through a partnership with NASA.

Rocket deal

WHAT: Up to 23 upper-stage rockets to be built for NASA's next manned lunar and space station missions

WHO: Boeing won a contract Tuesday worth a potential $1,125 billion

WHERE: Assembly will be at NASA's Michoud facility in east New Orleans

WHEN: Manufacturing work will start in late 2008 at Michoud

JOBS: Area jobs linked to the rockets are projected at 250, though NASA expects all jobs tied to the contract will approach 1,500, half of them at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama