Minority Report

This has been an interesting week (or couple weeks really) at work on Project Orion. Orion is supposed to be the vehicle that replaces the space shuttle and carries the crew in orbit after being launched on an Ares rocket (or potentially other rockets). The project has been run really well, however the budgets that were projected never materialized so it always "appeared" to be over budget when things got trimmed over the years for the smaller budgets. Don't be misled by people or companies that stand to gain by telling you otherwise because if Orion were to get cancelled they would 'get' that money, nice huh.

Anyway, the powers that be in the executive branch really, really hate Orion, Ares, and all of Constellation and tried to cancel it. Congress is pushing back, but now there is sort of a limbo where we will probably, not certainly continue but at significantly reduced, as in less than the already smaller, budget. The immediate effect of this has been a massive reduction in non-prime contractor staff (e.g. me and my coworkers) in the neighborhood of 60-70% reduction. This week was all the final decisions on the who stays and mostly the who goes. Thankfully, I am staying for now, at least until the NASA budget is approved and Orion either continues to exist with this or more budget. If Orion gets cut again, I doubt very much the project will even be functional.

So the short story is, I am still working on Orion but most of my colleagues are not starting October 1. Which means it has been a tense week, to be followed by several more especially for those more much more dramatically affected than me. Oh, and the first major round of Shuttle layoffs also occur in October given the only 2 maybe 3 flights left and the reduced amount of staff needed to support these and retirement. Anyone looking to invest in cheap real estate may want to check out Clear Lake, TX.