Boeing Wins Bid on Space Station : Technology: NASA also singles out Houston as command center for streamlined project. Contract may hurt Southland’s McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell.

The government chose Boeing Co. on Tuesday to lead development of a scaled-back space station, bringing new uncertainty to thousands of Southern California jobs now tied to the costly and controversial project.

NASA also said it chose Houston’s Johnson Space Center over sites in Huntsville, Ala., and Cleveland to serve as the space station’s command center. The single site should eliminate the “partisanship” that plagued the previous arrangement, in which several centers housed separate parts of the same program, the space agency said.

Boeing, based in Seattle, was chosen as prime contractor over McDonnell Douglas, whose aerospace unit in Huntington Beach makes trusses and other components for the proposed space station Freedom, and over Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne unit in Canoga Park, which is designing the power system.

Those two operations have space station contracts totaling $6.7 billion, and more than 4,000 Californians at those companies and elsewhere toil on the project. Their work for the moment will continue, and both have agreed to be suppliers to Boeing.

But those contracts--one of the bright spots in Southern California’s otherwise beleaguered aerospace industry--are now in jeopardy. Their fate depends on Boeing and Congress.

The space station project has already cost more than $11 billion, and Congress, acting on recommendations from President Clinton, is slashing the size and cost of the effort. A smaller project will likely mean fewer jobs in building the spacecraft.

Clinton has proposed spending $10.5 billion over the next five years on the orbiting space laboratory, a savings of more than $4 billion from earlier plans. Picking a prime contractor also was part of his streamlining effort. The House already has approved the smaller station; the Senate has yet to take up the matter.

Once Congress decides how much smaller the station will be, it’s possible that Boeing--now the boss of the program on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--would issue a new set of smaller contracts to McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell and other suppliers.

“We expect to have a significant role on the program,” said McDonnell spokeswoman Anne McCauley. But she noted that “what needs to be decided still is what the redesign is going to look like. It’s still very nebulous.”

McCauley added: “We plan to support NASA’s decision and expect within a few weeks to begin negotiations with NASA and Boeing on what McDonnell Douglas’ role will be.”

Rockwell said it was disappointed at not being named prime contractor, but said it would “cooperate fully” with Boeing. Rockwell officials declined to elaborate.

NASA spokesman Mark Hess said Boeing’s selection doesn’t necessarily mean the other contractors will now receive less work on the project, just that they will be working for Boeing instead of directly for NASA.

He said the amount of work that remains to be contracted out is “very small,” and that Boeing would primarily manage current contracts, rather than establish new ones.

“The intent here is not to have Boeing suddenly make wholesale changes,” Hess said. “They’re essentially going to work with the contract structure we already have in place.”

Boeing spokesman David Suffia concurred: “Our role is to lead this partnership of all the contractors. NASA is still the customer.”

Boeing was chosen largely because the company is already responsible for many of the space station’s key components, including the modules that astronauts will live in and the environmental control center that will allow them to breathe.

NASA and Boeing said they could not yet put a dollar value on Boeing’s new role, but being prime contractor could be a big plus. The aerospace giant might be able to keep a larger share of its workers on the program.

“The prime does have an advantage in that they have more control over who does what portion,” said John Harbison, aerospace director for the consulting firm Booz Allen & Hamilton. But it’s also in Boeing’s interest to “take full advantage” of the expertise of McDonnell and Rocketdyne, he said.

Before the designation of Boeing as primary contractor, many contractors were each responsible for different components of the station, and each answered to NASA separately.

Peltz reported from Los Angeles and Miller from Washington.