Shuttle retirement will hurt Florida's Space Coast

TITUSVILLE, Fla. -- NASA is retiring its shuttle fleet in two years, and for at least five years after that, no humans will launch from Florida's "Space Coast."

NASA is retiring its shuttle fleet in two years, and for at least five years after that, no humans will launch from Florida's "Space Coast."

Communities built up around Cape Canaveral figure to take a hobbling hit. There will be no more blastoffs by Atlantis, Discovery or Endeavour to pack hotels and viewing sites with tourists. Up to 6,400 of the 8,000 people who work as shuttle contractors in the area will lose their jobs, according to early NASA estimates.

It's a radical economic change for the region, but not unprecedented.

In the 1970s, NASA grounded the Apollo program that sent men to the moon and jobless rates soared. When the first Apollo flights launched in 1968, 26,000 worked at Kennedy; that was down to 16,000 by the mid-1970s when the program ended, according to NASA.

"People who work at the space center always have an idea that a program is coming to an end or there are so many years left," said Kevin Smith, president of the local Transport Workers Union, which represents shuttle employees ranging from janitors to satellite technicians. "But rarely do we ever get to that point. Now we know for sure that we are coming to the end of a program and we're going to have to do something."

It won't be as bad as the post-Apollo years, when the space center employed 40% of Brevard County's work force. Homes were said to be available by simply taking over the payments, and once-proud scientists subsisted on unemployment benefits or menial labor.

The area economy is more diversified now, with high-tech employers nearby such as Northrop Grumman Corp. And this time, NASA and local officials are planning for the change.

But it will be another dramatic shift for communities that saw their first motels, large apartments and shopping centers built in the space boom. Roads are named after pioneers like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, and children attend schools called Apollo Elementary, Astronaut High and Challenger 7.