Looks like NASA will be hiring soon...

[IMDWalrus]

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...ce_040307.html

NASA Faces Rush of Retirees
By Todd Halvorston and John Kelly

CAPE CANAVERAL -- Martin Hayes embodies the future of NASA.

The 25-year-old black engineer is young, intelligent, innovative and inspired by President Bush's plan to send humans back beyond Earth orbit.

Problem is, Hayes is one of few "fresh-outs," or those relatively new college graduates, in an aging NASA workforce. Instead, the space agency's labor pool is overloaded with people soon eligible to retire.

A pipeline once filled with American science and engineering graduates is shrinking. Students no longer see the aerospace industry as a choice career path. Higher-paying private sector jobs are alluring, and interest in federal service is declining.

Together, those factors raise serious questions about NASA's ability to recruit and retain a new generation of scientists, engineers and technologists needed to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and then on to Mars years after that.

"We have an immediate challenge right now," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said, adding that the agency faces a difficult and "very dynamic, demographic kind of (workforce) adjustment" to meet the Bush mandate.

"You can be assured that this is a critical issue for the future of NASA and the future of this mission," added former Air Force Secretary Edward "Pete" Aldridge, who heads a presidential commission overseeing NASA planning for the moon-Mars initiative.

A FLORIDA TODAY analysis of NASA records shows the severity of the situation:

Nearly 40 percent of the 18,146 people at NASA are age 50 or older. Those with 20 years government service now are eligible for early retirement.
Twenty-two percent of NASA workers are age 55 or older. Those with 30 years service now are eligible for full retirement benefits.
NASA employees over 60 outnumber those under 30 by a ratio of about 3 to 1.
A scant 4 percent of workers are under 30.
The better part of a quarter of NASA's workforce is eligible to retire in the next five years, said Vicki Novak, NASA's assistant administrator for human resources.

The upshot: NASA might be ill prepared for a bold future in space exploration.

"NASA is at a critical junction," the U.S. Government Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said in a report two days before the February 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster.

Its workforce is understaffed, under stress and the agency's ability to perform future missions "may be at risk" due to a shortage of workers in critically skilled areas, the GAO said.

"Plainly the problem is not federal employees. Rather, the problem is a lack of a consistent strategic approach to marshaling, managing and maintaining" the force needed to carry out NASA missions, according to the report.

Longtime agency observers say recruiting and retaining talent ranked among the least of nascent NASA's problems during the 1960s Apollo moon-landing project.

The workers then "were a bunch of kids . . . like Silicon Valley a couple of years ago," said Norman Augustine, retired chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin and a former presidential space adviser.

NASA's Apollo workforce was "young, innovative, creative," he added. "I think NASA is aging, and that's a concern."

The current predicament was reared in the 1990s, a decade when the agency started slashing a 24,000-member workforce to cut costs. The brain drain since then: about 25 percent.

The agency also invoked a lengthy hiring freeze that began around 1993. That dropped the number of under-30 NASA workers from 3,078 -- or 13 percent of the agency's talent that year -- to its current level: 767, or 4 percent.

Hayes, a 2000 graduate of Tuskegee (Ala.) University, said the hiring freeze created a "generation gap" within NASA.

"It's only been the last three or four years that they've really gotten back to hiring fresh-outs," the Kennedy Space Center propellant systems engineer said. "So naturally, there are not that many people of my generation that are here with me."

A potential exodus of middle-age employees could exacerbate NASA's workforce woes. The president's executive order calls for NASA's shuttle fleet to be retired in 2010 after construction of the International Space Station is complete -- a troubling prospect for those involved in either or both projects for entire careers.

"We need to make sure the skills are there all the way out to the last flight," said KSC deputy director Woodrow Whitlow.

Otherwise the whole moon-Mars plan could be in trouble.

NASA, Congress and the Bush administration already acknowledge and are attacking the problem.

Bush has signed into law new legislation that gives NASA unprecedented flexibility in managing its workforce. It gives the agency a greater ability to reward workers it wants to keep while luring new talent that otherwise might go elsewhere.

But the GAO said that alone "will not solve workforce problems." So the agency is in the midst of a top-to-bottom, talk-to-everybody, recruiting road show.

NASA chief O'Keefe headed to a middle school in suburban Virginia on Feb. 18, trying to drum up interest in science and math in a bid to win future workers. Among the audience: his sons, Jonathan and Kevin.

KSC Director James Kennedy and NASA astronaut Kay Hire more recently recruited students at a Tampa magnet middle school that specializes in aerospace and aviation education. And Hayes is set to venture back to his alma mater in March.

His pitch for NASA federal service: job security along with good health and retirement benefits, not to mention the cool quotient associated with working at NASA.

Hayes also intends to tell the next generation it's time to get on the next space train.

"I'm going to lift up the new vision and the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this new exploration initiative," Hayes said, "emphasizing how possible it is for us to do what the president is talking about -- going to Mars."

While this isn't good news, there's an upside for FIRSTers: NASA will be hiring for the forseeable future, and it should be easier for anyone interested in engineering to get a job with the space program. I just hope that this doesn't doom the plans for new missions to the Moon and Mars to failure...

[ngreen]

A pipeline once filled with American science and engineering graduates is shrinking. Students no longer see the aerospace industry as a choice career path. Higher-paying private sector jobs are alluring, and interest in federal service is declining.

Together, those factors raise serious questions about NASA's ability to recruit and retain a new generation of scientists, engineers and technologists needed to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and then on to Mars years after that.

As for recruiting I think NASA is doing great with FIRST and Mars. Having 20,000 creative kids that are interested somewhat in math and science realizing how great NASA people are is some good recruiting in my mind. They sold me on what a great job they do and how fun it seems. I see the high stress level but I built a robot in six weeks. I know I didn't send it to Mars but I did lose much sleep over it.

I would love to work for NASA. Like Hayes said the name says it all. Do you need any Chemical Engineers? I'll hopefully have a B.S. by 2007. Summer employment would be great for summer 2005 and 2006.

Just for knowledge, where would be the best place to look for possible summer internships/co-ops and for what ChemE's do at NASA?


EDIT: See. Three NASA interested people in a couple hours. I see a lot of these NASA engineers and employees as heroes (superstars of the science fields) and I wouldn't mind being someones hero. And they get to do really cool sounding things. I want my other car on mars, well in my case it would be my only car.

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Yeah, I'm now really interested in working for NASA, mostly because of the VCU regional and hearing Dave Lavery and Jeff Seaton talk in such glowing terms about their jobs. I'll be a Mechy in 2008, but I think I'd like to look around now... anywhere we can sign up for NASA internships?? Pleaaase?

[Katie Reynolds]

Hmmm ... maybe they'll be needing someone with a BS in Scientific and Technical Communications in, oh, five years.

If it happens, lemme know!