Cabana talks about future of KSC

Bob Cabana's worked in some of the coolest job sites NASA can offer.

First and foremost, he was an astronaut, so he's been aboard the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

He worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, home base of the astronauts and Mission Control. He served a tour in the leadership ranks at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where NASA test fires the rocket engines of today and tomorrow.

But Cabana has already become a Kennedy Space Center guy. Of course, that's his job as center director. And he hit all the big hometown topics at a breakfast Thursday morning with local community leaders. He tossed out some news, some opinion and some cheerleading during an hour-long speech and question-and-answer session.

Here's what perked my ears:

The jobs picture is fluid. Cabana says the latest analysis shows a net job loss at KSC of about 4,000 people (slightly higher than last reported) in the transition from the shuttle to a replacement space transportation system. To be clear, that's a net loss. The job losses will be steeper right after the shuttles retire in 2010 or 2011, with new positions being added slowly in the years afterward.

There are jobs to be gained in the reorganization of NASA, and Cabana aims to take advantage of the need to find efficiency to try to land Kennedy a bigger slice of the pie. For instance, he wants program engineering for the Orion spacecraft sited here, rather than the current situation where shuttle program engineering is in Houston for spaceships based here.

"Wouldn't it make more sense for the sustaining engineering to be here where the vehicle is?" Cabana said.

A friendly war of words is on for keeping one of the retired shuttle orbiters here on the Space Coast, and Cabana is lending his political might to the fight. The privately-run Visitor Complex just outside the KSC gates is working up plans for displaying Atlantis, Discovery or Endeavour should they best other museums vying for the three orbiters.

Cabana says Florida has home-field advantage. "What the heck? It's sitting out here. How are they going to take it from us? I'm just not going to let it go." To rousing applause, he continued, "Wouldn't it be great to have one of them here, where it all happened?"

The first test of the new Ares rocket program is on a tight schedule. While program managers tell Cabana the late August target date is achievable, the center director says September is more likely.

The biggest threat to the new moon program is the budget, Cabana said. KSC alone faces a $26 million budget shortfall next year, prompting center-wide looks at facilities, ways to eliminate duplicated work and other cost-cutting measures. Overall, NASA needs more money to fly out the shuttles' last missions, operate the space station and keep the moon program on track.

Much is in limbo until President Barack Obama hears back from the blue-ribbon panel he assigned to review NASA's human space flight program. The study was to last 60-90 days, but the members who will serve with chairman Norman Augustine are not all in place and the first meetings are set for mid-June.

Cabana sees signs that the review might prompt adjustments, but is optimistic the White House will not abandon goals of replacing the space shuttles and returning astronauts to the moon.