JPL Proposes Closing Edwards Test Facility : Space program: The move could eliminate 46 jobs. Some say a shutdown will leave the U.S. without knowledge of certain propulsion systems.

Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena announced Monday they have recommended closing JPL’s 48-year-old test facility at Edwards Air Force Base as a cost-saving measure, leaving the jobs of 46 workers there in limbo.

The shutdown of the 570-acre facility, which tested rockets for most of the major unmanned space exploration missions of the 1960s and 1970s, could begin late this year if the plan is accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, JPL’s parent agency, officials said.

“This has been an agonizing decision for JPL,” said Philip Garrison, manager of JPL’s propulsion and chemical systems section. “Much of JPL’s early history is tied up in the facility.”

He and other JPL officials announced the recommendation to employees there on Friday. Garrison said he expects NASA to decide within a month or so whether to proceed with the shutdown.

Garrison and other JPL officials said the Edwards facility has lost work and thus revenue in recent years as the testing of major space propulsion systems has increasingly gone to private contractors in the United States or to foreign countries such as Germany.

But current and past JPL employees at Edwards said Monday that JPL and NASA are making a mistake, saying a shutdown will leave the United States without important firsthand knowledge of such propulsion systems.

“I don’t believe NASA will really want to close the facility,” said Lancaster Mayor George Root, a 29-year JPL employee who retired last year as its No. 2 administrator at Edwards. “NASA’s budget is so immense that they probably squander the kind of money we’re talking about,” Root said.

Garrison said he could not say how much it costs JPL to run the Edwards facility and thus how much its closure would save. But Root said the annual amount would be about $3 million, about half to maintain the facility itself and the other half to staff it.

Root said JPL should maintain the isolated facility to keep it available for testing, but save money by eliminating its on-site staff. Because rocket fuels are often toxic and volatile, such testing generally cannot be done at JPL’s Pasadena facility, officials said.

Officials at JPL--which is operated by Caltech for NASA--could not immediately say whether the 28 JPL and 18 contract employees now at Edwards will be laid off or be able to transfer. But there have also been rumors of impending major cutbacks at JPL’s headquarters in Pasadena.

The Edwards test facility was established on a 40-acre site in 1945 and originally used for Army missile testing. After JPL came under NASA in 1958, the Edwards site was used to test rocket systems for the Ranger, Surveyor, Mariner, Viking and Voyager space exploration missions.

The closure process, including a required environmental cleanup, would take about two years, Garrison said. JPL also will discuss with the Air Force, which owns the site, what would become of the JPL buildings, he said.