The U.S. Space Program: Looking for the Right Stuff
On April 15, after two months of speculation, President Obama gave a
speech at the Kennedy Space Center outlining his new ambitious plans
for NASA and the American space program.
It’s a bold plan with a number of positives, not only nationally, but
in particular for the state of California. Its emphasis on unmanned
missions and private rocketry contractors can only help the state,
which is home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ames Research
Center, plus contractors such as Space X and Scaled Composites.
However, the long-term risks for California under this plan threaten to
undermine any true benefits the state might see. There are two
significant factors that raise concern: the shifting of risk from the
public to the private sector, and the continued failure of the
government to establish clear, achievable goals for the manned space
program. One of these two factors will invariably cause a future crisis
for our space program, but the other may have more profound impacts on
our overall competitiveness, both in aerospace and in other scientific
sectors.
Putting Northrop in Perspective
On the
first business day of 2010, Los Angeles received its strongest wake-up call yet
that its days as a center of the corporate universe may be coming to a close. That’s
when new CEO Wesley G. Bush announced that Northrop Grumman would move its headquarters
to the Washington, D.C., area to be closer to the Pentagon.
Northrop was
one of the few top companies still headquartered in the city of Los Angeles. In
1985, Los Angeles was the headquarters for 16 Fortune 1000 companies. Today,
just nine call Los Angeles home. The nagging question is why?
In many
ways, the move seems logical:
Rebuilding California’s Auto Industry
It seems like a lifetime ago, but in the not-too-distant past, California was a thriving center of auto manufacturing, home to three different GM assembly plants and two Ford factories.
But by 1992, four of these plants had been shuttered. More than 10,000 jobs with good wages and solid benefits evaporated, making it that much tougher for working-class Californians to enjoy a secure middle-class lifestyle. Today the last vestige of traditional, big-name auto manufacturing is about to disappear: The lone remaining GM plant, which had become a GM-Toyota joint venture, will shut down in 2010, taking with it another 4,500 jobs in the Fremont area.
The state’s golden era of manufacturing may be over, but nevertheless, California remains at the vanguard of auto design. Today there is an opportunity to build on that strength. If we move quickly and decisively, we can reclaim a leading role in car-making—one that looks toward the future rather than trying to recreate what we’ve lost in the past. By actively courting not just the design operations but also the building of alternative-fuel and electric vehicles, California can become a hub of green manufacturing.