Astronauts Face New Frontier: Unemployment

(Feb. 26) -- For 40 years, the American astronaut has been an icon of bravery and derring-do. But could these elite fliers be about to get their pink slips?

Under a proposal by President Barack Obama, NASA's campaign to send astronauts to the moon would be canceled, and the spaceship NASA has been building to replace the aging space shuttle would be scrapped. That would leave astronauts with nothing to fly, and only the International Space Station, a giant orbiting laboratory, to fly to. The White House wants crews to get to and from the station on spaceships that would be built and operated by private companies -- and perhaps flown by private employees.

In the face of that proposal, the space agency will soon ask an independent panel to assess how big the astronaut corps should be, what role it should play and how to run a "cost-effective" space-exploration program, according to NASA budget documents released Monday. NASA chief Charles Bolden, himself a former shuttle astronaut, has made it clear that nothing is sacred.

"We need to have the discussion of how important is it to have a career astronaut contingent, as opposed to none," Bolden said recently. "We'll do whatever the American public wants."

No matter how Obama's plans fare, it's certain that a Golden Age of the astronaut business is ending.

The three remaining shuttles are scheduled to be towed into museums as early as this year. With them will go the ability to send dozens of NASA astronauts into space. The shuttle seats seven and routinely makes flights every few months, allowing more than 25 astronauts to make the trip into weightlessness each year. The world's only other well-traveled spaceship, Russia's, seats three and makes two or three trips annually.

After the shuttle retires, an astronaut's only possible role in space will be as a scientist or engineers on the space station. And there won't be many openings for that.

"It's going to be one or two people at a time, twice a year," says John Logsdon, a space expert at George Washington University. "So at maximum there are six flight opportunities a year. ... You don't need 88 people to meet those requirements." NASA has that many active astronauts; more serve in managerial positions.

NASA hired nine astronauts last year, thinking they'd fly on the space station or on NASA's new spaceship, even though it wasn't supposed to be ready for five to 10 years. Obama's plan to cancel that ship and rely on private "space taxis" to get humans into space means even less need for astronauts. The taxi drivers would probably be employed by private companies, too.

There are plenty of talented ex-fighter-pilots and ex-astronauts to fly the private spaceships, says former astronaut Scott Horowitz, now an aerospace consultant and lobbyist. But he worries that private companies may not invest in the vast training infrastructure NASA uses to prepare astronauts for flight. The space agency boasts a half-dozen sophisticated flight simulators, a fleet of practice jets and an immense swimming pool for rehearsing emergency splashdowns.

"Will you have astronauts training to the same level as NASA trains them today? Probably not," Horowitz says. "As long as nothing goes wrong, they'll be OK, but it's the unknown unknowns that really will bite them."

Maybe it would be for the best to eliminate the astronaut corps -- and its big drain on the taxpayers, says Michael Robinson, a historian of exploration at the University of Hartford.

"When you're using public money, you need to have a tangible gain for that money, beyond national prestige ... or 'We beat the Chinese,' " he says. "I'm not convinced that having a national astronaut corps is the way to go."

But on another level, Robinson also rues the changes. "I grew up with the image of astronauts on the moon imprinted on my mind. Those are cherished memories."