VICE PRESIDENT TOURS LOCKHEED MARTIN IN JEFFCO
Pence, given flag carried on Orion, checks out Mars lander and VR lab
In Colorado on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence says “America is going to lead in space once again.”
From orbiting around the world to hanging on a wall at the White House, one American flag will have had quite a journey. Vice President Mike Pence, after finishing a tour of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County on Thursday, was presented with the flag originally flown during Orion’s first test flight in December 2014.
“America is going to lead in space once again,” Pence said to a pool of national and local media after receiving the gift from Lockheed president and CEO Marillyn Hewson.
Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin held on as the No.1 recipient of government contracts in 2016, receiving $43 billion, according to federal procurement data. The company has 8,600 employees in Colorado, 4,000 of whom are based out of the Jefferson County facility.
Pence, who came to Colorado to speak at a Republican party fundraiser Thursday night, and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson were greeted by Hewson and other top Lockheed execs in the tour.
During the tour, Pence took a peek at NASA’s Mars lander InSight, which is being built by Lockheed, before its May 5 launch. While checking out the Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory, or CHIL, a virtual-reality engineering lab, Wilson threw on a VR headset and carefully walked around a virtual Mars orbiter that is part of the company’s concept for an eventual Mars base camp. Then the two donned coats to explore the GPS III satellite clean room, taking a look at an Air Force-cleared satellite that should be launched next year.
Pence signed a piece of thermal blanketing that will be put on a satellite before heading off into space. He gave the lined-up crew of engineers a thumbs-up before posing for a picture and shaking their hands.
Pence heads the White House’s National
Space Council, which held its first meeting this month. Hewson was among the business leaders who were invited to speak. Beyond Pence, the council includes several high-ranking Cabinet and agency officials, signaling an interest in space programs from the Trump administration.
Matt Kramer, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said the company was honored to play host to Pence and appreciated the Trump administration’s vision to secure America’s lead in space.
“(Lockheed is) ready to do what we can to help the administration achieve its goal,” Kramer said.
In the company’s thirdquarter earnings call, Hewson urged Congress to adopt a new defense budget in the final National Defense Authorization Act. A continuing resolution for fiscal year 2018 limits the Department of Defense spending to the previous fiscal year levels through Dec. 8.
Most of the 2017 orders are already funded and would not be affected, Hewson said. But if the budget constraints continued past Dec. 8, she warned that 2018 orders would be impacted.
“We continue to urge our lawmakers to work toward an agreement, which modifies the budget caps, provides the defense funding required to capitalize our military assets and delivers to our military the resources vital to our nation’s security,” Hewson said during the call.
The Trump administration proposed a $575 bil- lion defense budget. The House passed a base defense budget of $593 billion, while the Senate passed one of $611 billion. The two need to be consolidated but will exceed the current budget caps, requiring legislation to adjust spending limits.
Lockheed Martin missed its quarterly profit estimates for the second time this year. Its Space Systems fared the worst of the company’s four units, with profit dropping 52 percent to $218 million. The yearover-year drop is due largely to a one-time $127 million jump in profits in third quarter of 2016 as the company had an increased stake in AWE, which manages nuclear missile systems in the United Kingdom.
Lockheed Martin attributed the rest of the decline to where the company is in the production cycle and to reduced profits from its joint venture United Launch Alliance, a rocketmaker based in Centennial.