Aerospace companies wait for word about stimulus money
Denver Business Journal - by Greg Avery
After nearly four months, local aerospace companies still are waiting to learn what stimulus funding may be available to them — with the knowledge that more than $475 million has been tentatively earmarked for their existing projects.
In February, Congress approved more than $1 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for space projects.
Whether or when local aerospace contractors will see any of the money indirectly depends on NASA budgeting for fiscal year 2010, which is being hashed out now in Washington, D.C.
Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is in a typical situation. Preliminary stimulus plans at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show money coming to two projects for which Ball Aerospace is a contractor. Yet, nearly four months after ARRA’s passage, the company doesn’t know whether it will have a shot at any of the money.
“We may. We aren’t sure, and it’s hard to know at this point,” said Roz Brown, Ball Aerospace spokeswoman.
NASA and other federal agencies with space projects, such as NOAA, plan to funnel much of their stimulus funds into long-standing missions.
NASA expects to make about half its stimulus grants through competitive bidding, with the rest headed either to its internal projects or to companies with existing contracts.
The agency can’t announce stimulus allocations yet because they’re tied to its 2010 budget that Congress is considering, said Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokeswoman.
“Because we have the stimulus money, we’re anticipating being able to spend it this year to preserve some money we would otherwise spend in the 2010 budget,” she said.
Congressional subcommittees have proposed reducing the Obama administration’s requested funding for manned space exploration in NASA’s 2010 budget, which may prompt NASA to rethink parts of its stimulus plan.
Outside its 2010 budget, NASA currently plans to spend $400 million in stimulus money for its Constellation program, which is building a rocket and crew capsule to replace the space shuttle and serve the International Space Station. Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. is leading the $8.2 billion development of the Orion capsule that’s at the heart of the Constellation program.
NASA has planned to spend some stimulus money to test Orion on the ground, but Lockheed Martin will have to wait until NASA’s budget is resolved to discover how much Orion gets and whether it will have to bid to get it.
The federal stimulus for space-related work is relatively small for a field in which projects cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. But the money still could be key.
Demand for private and government satellites and rocket launches has slowed — the Department of Defense just cancelled plans for a multibillion-dollar satellite network known as TSAT — and any government funding increase is welcomed.
The stimulus won’t come close to fixing chronic underfunding of NASA, said Janet Stevens, spokeswoman for the Space Foundation, a Colorado Springs-based aerospace industry group.
“It’s a good step, but it’s not enough — not enough to make the kind of difference that’s needed at NASA,” she said.
Still, it’s money that gets spent domestically and will support skilled jobs, Stevens said.
Whatever benefit contractors on existing projects gain from NASA’s stimulus spending is likely to be temporary, said Professor Henry Hertzfeld, a researcher with the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
“Unless companies can generate additional business as a result of the stimulus, these additions will evaporate,” he said.
NASA has proposed putting $75 million of ARRA funds toward the James Webb Space Telescope, an orbiting infrared observatory that’s scheduled to launch in 2014. Northrop Grumman Corp. is the lead contractor, with Ball Aerospace overseeing construction of the telescope’s massive mirrors.
NASA earmarked the stimulus money to keep the project on track and to head off “significant workforce reductions” this fiscal year, the agency’s stimulus plan says.
This was a surprise to Sally Koris, spokeswoman for Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman. She couldn’t explain what the earmark’s language referred to about looming workforce reductions for the project.
“It’s been on an extremely tight budget,” Koris said. “But it’s hitting its milestones.”
NOAA assigned some of its stimulus money to the planned climate-observing satellite fleet, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Ball Aerospace is building a test satellite for NPOESS.
Even if stimulus money becomes available to Ball Aerospace for its work on the James Webb Space Telescope or NPOESS, the company would have to weigh whether any conditions for accepting the money are acceptable, Brown said.
