The effect on America’s space program

With workers at home, the shutdown will likely mean later dates for key NASA initiatives, such as the Orion capsule that will return humans to the moon, the high-powered SLS rocket and the start of the agency’s commercial crew program with a SpaceX test flight.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet over the weekend that the uncrewed test flight of a Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon astronaut capsule will likely get pushed to February from its original January launch objective. It’s another delay in the program which ventures to decrease the U.S.’s reliance on Russia to send astronauts to space.

SpaceX has already felt the burn of a shutdown before when the company had to delay the test fire of its massive Falcon Heavy rocket last year due to the previous shutdown. That shutdown, however, only lasted three days.

“Any time this happens, things get impacted,” said Edward Grabowski, president of union Local 2061 and a logistics specialist at Yang Enterprises. “It’s nonproductivity.”

At the union meeting, Ching urged union members to call their representatives in Congress and remind them to include contractors in any resolution that might be coming, and, most of all, to end the gridlock.

“I’ve had several people call me and say, ‘How long is this gonna go on? I can’t survive, I can’t wait months,’” Ching said. “At what point are these employees going to sit there and say, ‘You know what? I’ve had enough. I’m going to turn around and I’m going to go find a job somewhere else. The loss of experience will affect America’s space program.”

As he spoke, President John F. Kennedy peered from a photo on a yellowed, framed letter on the union meeting room wall. It had been signed by the space center’s namesake.

At the top was an enlarged quote: “The work you are doing is vital to our national security.”