Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
NASA's largest labor union is calling on the agency to publicly promise not to lay off any employees and abandon the work force strategy under which it is trying to eliminate "excess capacity" at its field centers. NASA says it has identified roughly 1,000 full-time equivalent positions at its centers for which it currently has no productive work supporting the agency's vision for space exploration. This translates to more than 800 employees who could face layoffs if the agency is unable to switch them to other programs.
The Commerce Department's Office of Space Commercialization (OSC) is planning an initiative to try to entice businesses that have not traditionally been part of the space industry to get involved. "We are going to do a number of outreach activities, both with ... OSC as lead, and also co-chairing with other government agencies, where we want to get to the nontraditional space industry," OSC Director Ed Morris told The DAILY. Examples of powerful nontraditional players could be Exxon Mobil or Ford Motor Co., Morris said.
Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale says that NASA's ability to up the pace of shuttle flights to the rate necessary for completing the International Space Station by 2010 will be contingent not on orbiter turnaround but on how quickly it can analyze in-flight anomalies.
