Two weeks ago The Times-Picayune reported on a visit by the crew of the Atlantis space shuttle to Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The astronauts came to thank the employees who built the external fuel tank used during the final space shuttle mission on July 8.
Post-mission visits have been a happy tradition at Michoud and other government-contracted factories for years, but this most recent visit served as a chilling reminder to hundreds of Michoud workers facing unemployment.
Michoud produced external fuel tanks for the space shuttle since the ‘80s. Employment dwindled at the facility from 5,591 workers in 1983 to about 2,300 employees in 2008. Since the announcement of the end of the shuttle program that year, layoffs ravaged the facility and left less than 500 employed by the shuttle’s final flight last month. Most of the remaining staff will be leaving the facility over the next few weeks.
Across the country, contracted factories are laying off workers as the conclusion of the space shuttle program spells an end to thousands of jobs and the loss of an important part of our national identity.
President Obama canceled the space shuttle’s successor, the Constellation Program, which hoped to develop a new re-usable spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts into near earth orbit and eventually to the moon and Mars. The president turned over further development of spacecraft to the private sector while American astronauts hitch rides to the International Space Station with the Russian Federal Space Agency.
While the private sector has the potential to match and even exceed NASA’s achievements in manned space flight, I am still disappointed to see the shuttle grounded. Most university students have never experienced a world without the space shuttle program, which launched Columbia in 1981. NASA has been sending people into space for the last 50 years, since Alan Shepard became the second man in space in 1961.
While NASA astronauts are rightly greeted as heroes back here on earth, I fear private contractors will not inspire the same kind of awe and imagination in the minds of the population. In general, Americans have a great deal of respect for our military and the men and women who serve in it, but we hold a much lower opinion of the military contractors and mercenaries who complete many of the same duties as our armed forces but exist in the private sector.
Most Americans disagree with ending the space shuttle program, a move originating under President Bush and later enacted by President Obama. According to a poll conducted by IBOPE Zogby International, 59 percent of Americans want space shuttle missions to continue while only 33 percent want them to end. The remaining 8 percent were undecided.
Predicting how companies will fill the void left by the shuttle program is difficult, but we can only hope they find inexpensive, safe and responsible ways to transport people and cargo into orbit and beyond. Turning over space exploration to the private sector has the potential to reduce cooperation among space agencies and tarnish the image of future astronauts, but we can only hope the people designing, testing and piloting the next generation of spacecraft are as skilled and dedicated as their predecessors.
Companies such as SpaceX and SpaceAdventures are promising a return to the moon and a manned mission to Mars as early as 2020. While NASA may lose some of its grandeur as space travel becomes privatized, those of us who did not grow up to be astronauts may finally get a chance in space for just a few million dollars rather than the tens of millions a trip currently costs.
Hopefully competition in the private sector will eventually drive the cost down so more people will have a chance to experience the vast expanse of our infinite universe firsthand.
 
Andrew Shockey is a 20 year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]