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Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Sounds Alarm on Space Industrial Base, Jobs

By Doug Mohney
Contributing Editor

With the shutdown of the space shuttle, the U.S. space industrial base is facing a crisis, according to Jim Maser, president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.  

Maser says his company, a division of United Technologies Corporation, already has plans to close half its offices and factory space over the next three years, and might have to lay off hundreds of employees, reports Reuters, unless NASA puts together a plan for a next-generation heavy lift rocket within the next four to eight months.

Analysts have expressed concerns that a reduction in NASA activities would have ripple effects across the rocket industry, driving up pricing for both liquid-fueled and solid-fueled rockets used by the Department of Defense (DoD) to put satellites into orbit; it may also affect future pricing on strategic missiles carried in submarines and deployed in silos which rely upon the safety and reliability of solid fuels to launch at a moment's notice.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne says it is doing its part to cut costs, such as dropping down from 600 to 200 suppliers over the past year, but Maser expressed frustration with NASA's trend to fixed price development contracts. He's willing to accept fixed price contracts so long as the government provided a commitment to investment and production that would allow the industry to maintain key facilities and retain highly skilled workers. 

Maser predicted that many second- and third-tier suppliers would leave the business. Pratt & Whitney was willing to compete for future orders, but there had to be business to bid one. He said the DoD has been using NASA development programs to subsidize military space launch efforts, but without new NASA work, the cost of rockets for military satellite launches would go up.

If government could provide some future roadmap, Maser said he could work with it to lower costs. But his company purposely submitted a "ridiculous" high bid for new rocket motors last year and added a profit margin of 25 percent to underline the high risk involved in fixed price contracts and decided not to bid on other parts of the contract to show the difficult companies have when there's so little work available.

So far, NASA has failed to reach agreement with Congress on how to proceed in building a new heavy-lift rocket system. Congress has insisted that NASA use technologies left over from the space shuttle program to bring in a vehicle that can launch anywhere from 70 to 100 tons to low earth orbit on a budget of $6.9 billion from 2011 through 2013, with it to be in service by the end of 2016. NASA has said it can't do it for that amount of money while a Senate subcommittee has insisted that it is the law and NASA needs to suck it up and follow the law.