Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. scored a historic win Thursday, walking away with a $3.9 billion contract to build the NASA spacecraft that will take astronauts to the moon and bring 450 more aerospace industry jobs to Colorado.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration awarded the Orion crew exploration vehicle contract, a successor to the space shuttle, to a Lockheed Martin-led team based in Jefferson County.
Many observers in the aerospace industry considered it a come-from-behind victory. The competing El Segundo, Calif.- based Northrop Grumman- Boeing team was seen as the front-runner because it had more extensive experience with the space shuttle.
The Orion CEV will take astronauts to the international space station, to the moon and possibly to Mars. NASA plans the first flight with astronauts by 2014 and the first flight to the moon by 2020.
Lockheed’s Jefferson County- based space-systems division won the contract, but the main Orion program office will be based in Houston.
Orion’s large structures and composites will be built at NASA’s Michoud assembly facility in the New Orleans area. Final assembly and testing work would be done at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
At Lockheed buildings in Jefferson County’s Waterton Canyon and in Houston on Thursday afternoon, employees who worked on the Orion proposal gathered in conference rooms to watch the NASA news conference. There was “a lot of whooping and hollering,” said John Stevens, director of Orion business development.
“We have people who have really put a large portion of their life and their life force into this,” Stevens said. “Now they have the opportunity to exercise that passion.”
Elliot Pulham, president of the Space Foundation in Colorado Springs, said Lockheed will also shoulder intense responsibilities.
“Space work is very difficult work,” Pulham said. “They cannot screw this up. NASA is depending on them. The nation is depending on them. There’s a lot of pressure to perform.”
Lockheed cannot go over budget, he said. “The funding is there, but it’s only there as long as NASA and its teams can execute on schedule and on budget.”
Stevens acknowledged that funding is “always an issue. There’s never enough money to go around in the Congress.”
About 150 people already work on Orion in Colorado for Lockheed and subcontractors. A total of 2,300 will now be required in jobs across the nation. Stevens said Lockheed wants to have 600 on the project in Colorado in the next three months or sooner.
Space Systems executive vice president Joanne Maguire “is anxious to get this thing running,” he said.
Lockheed is also looking for a metro-area facility large enough to house at least 600 people, Stevens said. The total Orion workforce in Colorado could grow to as many as 800 in future years.
The initial contract is expected to run through 2013. Stevens said Lockheed also has contract options worth about $4.25 billion that could go through 2019 for spacecraft orders and sustaining engineering work. Future Orion contracts could be worth much more.
Orion, the first new manned spacecraft in three decades, is a central part of President Bush’s plan to send astronauts to the moon and eventually to Mars.
The Orion capsule will be able to carry six people to the international space station and four people to the moon.
Until last year, Lockheed had been working on an airplane-shaped design for the vehicle. When NASA asked for a capsule shape borrowed from Apollo, the company had to redo its design.
“We started off behind,” Stevens said.
Pulham said he thinks Lockheed “almost had a feeling of something to prove, because their earlier concepts were kind of rejected by NASA. I think that really fired them up.”
In response to those who thought the Northrop Grumman-Boeing team had more experience, Stevens said, “the experience is actually 35 years old. The people who designed the original shuttle are all retired or dead, or both. There are very few people who worked on the original shuttle that are still in the industry.”
Stevens said Lockheed does not anticipate any major changes in its Orion team, which does not include Boeing or Northrop Grumman.
Lockheed also has the chance to bid on the Ares launch vehicles that will be used to carry Orion into space.
Lockheed’s last NASA contract for a manned spacecraft ended badly in 2001. The company was hired to develop the X-33 space plane, but the project was scuttled because of problems with its fuel tank.
Orion will be different, Stevens said. X-33 “was a stretch on technologies,” while this vehicle draws on Apollo and space shuttle features. “The principal risk is how long it will take to do this,” he said.
While Apollo missions to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s lasted up to several days, Orion will be able to support missions of up to six months.
“Space is no longer going to be a destination that we visit briefly,” Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate. “We’re going to learn to live off the land.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
