Spacewalk Signals Start of Rocketdyne Phaseout

As the international space station finally begins to take shape in orbit, workers at Boeing Co.’s Rocketdyne division are approaching a bittersweet crossroads.

Employees celebrated this week as two spacewalking astronauts completed the connections needed to power up the station’s electrical systems, which were designed in Canoga Park.

But as the historic event marked the first test in space of Rocketdyne’s designs, it also signaled the beginning of the end of the initial phase of the program, meaning that hundreds of workers will be reassigned to different projects as early as next year.

“Bittersweet is a good word,” Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck said Tuesday. “When you start getting near the end of something you’ve worked on for this long, I guess there is a little bit of sadness.”

But he and other Rocketdyne executives said that even as the company scales back the number of workers on the space station program from about 600 to about 300, the facility will continue to have a hand in ongoing maintenance for the electrical systems and other aspects.

“We have a lot going on at Rocketdyne,” said Beck, noting that the facility designs and manufactures engines for the space shuttle program. “We’re very confident that there will continue to be work for the space station people.”

Currently, the contract for design and testing of the space station’s electrical system is Rocketdyne’s largest, bringing in about $300 million for fiscal year 1998, according to Bill F. Weston, program manager for the space station project at Rocketdyne.

Douglas T. Stone, Houston-based vice president of communications for the space station program, said that more than 4,000 employees at Boeing and its subcontractors are involved in space station work.

“It’ll be about half that a year from now,” he said.

The program has been phasing out workers for nearly two years, said Stone, adding that nationwide, the program peaked at 7,200 workers in January, 1997.

And though redeployments lie ahead, company executives on Tuesday were all smiles as they savored the success of their first space test.