Lockheed plans major CEV work in Houston

Lockheed Martin announced today that if its team gets the contract to build the shuttle's successor, it will establish its crew exploration vehicle program office in Houston. The plan would create 1200 jobs, about half of its CEV effort - and three to four times as many jobs as the LockMart team has slated for Florida. In Houston, the team will do systems engineering and avionics and software development and testing. The company announced in February that it would do final assembly and testing of the CEV in Florida, taking advantage of facilities at Kennedy Space Center and creating 300 to 400 jobs. The announcement shows again that while Florida got a piece of the action, it wasn't a very big piece. Of course, a lot more has to happen before any of this is real. Lockheed is competing with a Boeing-led team. NASA is expected to announce the winning contractor in late summer. And Lockheed will likely make more announcements about its plans, which could create more work in other states, such as Colorado, where it already has facilities (officials said today some systems work would be done in Denver, but Houston was the major site). The company's teammates in this effort are Orbital Sciences, EADS SPACE Transportation, United Space Alliance, Hamilton Sundstrand and Honeywell.