Lompoc Takes On Palmdale; Shuttle Assembly Site Is Prize

The usually quiescent California cities of Lompoc and Palmdale are flexing their political muscles in Washington this week in a pork barrel competition to host the assembly site for the space shuttle orbiter to replace the lost Challenger.

NASA has always built space shuttles in Palmdale, but the Air Force has recently suggested that its $3.5-billion spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which has become something of a white elephant in the last year, be used as the assembly site.

The Air Force initiative, which has gained little favor so far in NASA, has set off a heated civic competition between Palmdale, an aerospace industrial town in the Mojave Desert, and Lompoc (rhymes with slow poke, local folks say), the coastal city closest to Vandenberg.

Civic teams from the two towns have gone to Washington this week for several days of political meetings with top Air Force officials, NASA administrators and members of Congress.

Prestige and an estimated 1,000 jobs go with the shuttle assembly, but the award would also carry long-term benefits that could bring important aerospace business to the area.

Lompoc, along with the nearby Santa Maria, has hired the nationally powerful public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton to represent its interests and has enlisted the help of a recently retired two-star Air Force general from Vandenberg. Bumper stickers on the issue have been distributed in Lompoc newspapers.

Meanwhile, the city fathers of Palmdale have put on their own lobbying campaign. Former X-15 test pilot Pete Knight is mayor of Palmdale, and Palmdale Councilman Tom Smith is executive director of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, one of the nation’s premier aerospace organizations. They made their own Washington swing earlier this week, meeting with Adm. Richard H. Truly, NASA’s associate administrator for space flight, among others.

Despite appearances that the issue is merely a regional contest between two employment-hungry small towns, the outcome carries important national consequences for the Air Force and has created troubling technical concerns within NASA.

When the Air Force first proposed the idea, NASA recommended against it after a cursory evaluation. Nonetheless, the Air Force pressed for a thorough economic analysis of the assembly costs at the two sites.

Economic Analysis

Rockwell International, the prime contractor for building the orbiter, is conducting the economic analysis and is scheduled to present to NASA on March 15 its cost estimate of building the shuttle in Palmdale and on April 15 the cost for Vandenberg.

“There is a lot of emotion in this issue, and we are trying to keep it out,” said Rockwell spokesman Ed Kennedy. “Our job is to get the facts for NASA to make a decision while all this flak is going on outside. If NASA wants our opinions, we will express it later on to NASA.”

Rockwell assembled the four previous orbiters at a large NASA facility in Palmdale, part of an aerospace industrial complex in a vast desert tract. Rockwell fabricated parts for the orbiter at its facility in Downey and trucked the parts about 45 miles northeast to Palmdale.

The Air Force wants Rockwell to transport parts about 150 miles north to Vandenberg, where the military service has built a huge spaceport to launch shuttles into polar orbit.

But launches from Vandenberg have been delayed until at least the early 1990s as a result of the Challenger disaster. The Air Force has begun to mothball its $3.5-billion investment, and employment is dropping from a peak of 3,000 to about 250 later this year.

Jack Watkins, a retired Air Force general who is part of the Lompoc task force, said the group is hoping that Air Force Secretary Edward Aldridge Jr. will influence NASA to accept the Vandenberg option.

“It would make use of facilities that are modern and capable,” Watkins said. “This would further the nation’s manned space activity on the West Coast.”

Concern for Added Cost

But NASA and the Palmdale advocates are concerned that such a move could add to the cost of assembling the shuttle and, even worse, create technical safety issues.

“If we use Vandenberg, we would have to write all new procedures,” said Robert Battey, NASA assistant manager for orbiter production. “There is always the opportunity to introduce error when you write new procedures. We check everything out very carefully and the probability is very low, but there is the possibility to introduce errors.”

Another NASA engineer knowledgeable about the Vandenberg effort said many NASA officials are incredulous that after all the lessons of the Challenger accident, political officials would attempt to impose a technical decision on NASA against the agency’s judgment.

Palmdale Mayor Knight added: “To move the production is ridiculous from a safety standpoint. If we have another accident, it really is going to put a damper on the space program. I don’t think the nation can afford that kind of risk.”

Knight said the cost of moving the assembly site could add 25% to the cost of the orbiter and could prompt a rethinking of whether the nation should even build an orbiter. Tooling, test equipment and personnel would have to be relocated.

In addition, Rockwell had planned to rehire the work force that built the first four orbiters, many of whom now work on the B-1 bomber program in Palmdale. The United Auto Workers, which represents the Rockwell employees, has opposed the move because it claims that 95% of its members will not relocate to Lompoc.

Despite all the lobbying, neither Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) nor Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) are likely to take sides. Similarly, key committees are unlikely to press for any particular political outcome.

“We don’t think of NASA as a relief agency,” said a key staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “If Lompoc wants to create jobs, maybe they should go to the Economic Development Administration.”