More than 8,000 NASA contractor jobs in the nation’s manned space program could be eliminated after the space shuttle program is shut down in 2010, the agency said today.

The number of civil servants is expected to remain roughly the same, but dramatic job cuts are possible among private contractors as NASA transitions to the Constellation program, which is developing the next-generation vehicle and rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars.

Florida will be hit the hardest:

The bleakest forecast was issued for the flagship Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where just 1,600 to 2,300 employees were expected to remain in 2011, a cut of up to 80 percent from its current 8,000 workers. The Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans was forecast to lose as many as 1,300 of its 1,900 jobs.

Houston is not going to get hit quite as hard, because many of the jobs that we do here are similar to jobs that will be required for Constellation, like flight planning and mission operations. Most of the jobs at KSC are very tightly tied to the Shuttle hardware and the craft itself. But we have a few people like that here in Houston.

I’m sure that many of the lost jobs will be those occupied by men and women already close to retirement, or already partially retired. I know a couple of people like that myself. But some of the jobs lost could be young people.

I was telling Wendy just yesterday that I saw a guy in the cafeteria, a guy whose job for at least the past ten years, maybe longer, has been in designing and maintaining the Shuttle GPCs, the General Purpose Computers that fly the shuttle during the most critical mission phases. Unfortunately for him, USA doesn’t have any work — that I know of — dealing with the onboard computers. That guy might be able to find a job with Honeywell in Arizona, or he might be able to find work around Houston, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to continue with USA even though he’s a talented and skilled hardware man.

And that’s too bad, even though the guy is a pompous ass.

We’ve known that things were going to change, and we knew it some time ago. But as we approach 2010, the last year for the Shuttle, the changes are no longer way off in some distant future. They’re just around the corner, and as that date gets closer, it’s really going to begin putting pressure on us. Even for those of us fortunate enough to have found a new home in Constellation, it’s likely to be a turbulent time.

Fifty years ago, before most people living today were born, the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik was heard round the world. It was the sound of wonder and foreboding. Nothing would ever be quite the same again — in geopolitics, in science and technology, in everyday life and the capacity of the human species.

The Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite, a new moon, on Oct. 4, 1957. Climbing out of the terrestrial gravity well, rising above the atmosphere and into orbit, Sputnik crossed the threshold into a new dimension of human experience. People could now see their kind as spacefarers. Their enhanced mobility might someday prove as liberating as the first upright steps of hominid ancestors long ago.

The immediate reaction, though, reflected the dark concerns of a world in the grip of the cold war, a time of fear and division in which the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, stared each other down with the menace of mass destruction. Sputnik altered the nature and scope of the cold war.

It was an unprepossessing agent of alarm. A simple sphere weighing just 184 pounds and not quite two feet wide, it had a highly polished surface of aluminum, the better to reflect sunlight and be visible from Earth. Two radio transmitters with whiskery antennas issued steady signals on frequencies that scientists and ham operators could pick up, and so confirm the achievement.

How Sputnik changed the world

When Sputnik was lifted into space on October 4, 1957, it was humankind’s first step into the final frontier.

The small aluminium sphere emitted a shrill signal and orbited the Earth for three months.

It was trumpeted by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as a conquest that made the capitalist world look at the Soviet Union in a different way.

He was right.

Shortly after, his American counterpart, John F Kennedy, upped the ante.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth,” Mr Kennedy said.

Sputnik ignited panic in the West.

Oct. 4, 1957: Russ Puts Man-Made Moon in Orbit!

But Sputnik may not have been quite the world-beater it seemed at the time. In recent interviews leading up to the 50th anniversary of the launch, Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program, admitted that Sputnik was something of a lash-up, a hastily put-together gamble using a spare rocket and a satellite assembled from what was on hand.

Nevertheless, as it had been with the sudden emergence of the USSR as a nuclear power eight years earlier, the American public was caught off guard by Sputnik and frightened by the implications of a successful Soviet rocket launch. If the Soviets could put a basketball-sized artificial satellite into orbit, they could certainly put a nuclear-tipped missile into a target in the United States.

American unease was only heightened when Sputnik 1 was followed a month later by the successful launching of Sputnik 2, which carried the dog Laika, the first living passenger, into space.

Update: She launched and looks beautiful.

Space shuttle Atlantis ended its STS-117 mission today by landing safely at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

• The first gear (rear wheels) touchdown was at 3:49:38 p.m. EDT
• Nose gear was at 3:49:49 p.m.
• Wheel stop was at 3:50:48 p.m. for a total mission time of 13 days, 20 hours, 12 minutes and 44 seconds

The post landing news conference is tentatively set for about 6:00 p.m. EDT on NASA TV.

Update: They just made the “Press to ATO” call, meaning that Atlantis can still reach orbit if an engine fails. (ATO is Abort to Orbit, the only abort scenario a shuttle has ever used… or so I’m told.)

Update: Atlantis just reached MECO (Main Engine Cutoff), concluding the most hazardous part of ascent. External tank separation in a few seconds, and in about 45 minutes 36 minutes, at T+45:00, they’ll fire up the Orbital Maneuvering System engines to circularize the orbit. It’s been a beautiful launch.

What a weekend… lots to write about, when I get time.

I have been invited to join USA’s Flight Software group as the lead of the team developing the Audio/Visual components of the Orion spacecraft’s flight software (USA is a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin for developing certain parts of the Orion’s onboard software). I jumped at the offer. Opportunities to help build a new spacecraft come along once in a lifetime. The best part of my work on Orion is that I won’t have to transfer out of my department; I’ll be able to work both jobs while I’m able. The new job will be part-time at first, but will become full-time next year.

We have a huge amount of work to do. My first task is to read a stack of documents a couple of feet high. Right now I’m the only one in the group, so my next task will be to assemble a team. The software is going to be developed using modeling techniques I’ve never worked with before. The biggest change for me is to write software that is flight critical; if we don’t do our job right, people could die. Flight software has to be certified, a process of inspections and testing that’s far more rigorous than anything my software has ever been through.

It’s an amazing challenge and I’m thoroughly excited about it. Wish me luck!

Engineers wanted time to pour over data on ground and flight systems.

They want to “pour over” the data? What are they going to pour, I wonder. Maybe whatever that reporter was drinking. Instead of pour, the word the reporter wanted was pore, which means to “to read or study attentively”. Shouldn’t a professional know better than that? And where was his editor?

I see this kind of thing every now and then, but today for some reason it really irritated me.

Update: A perfect do-orbit burn has completed. There is no turning back once that burn has completed, so they’re definitely landing today! Soon they’ll start up the Auxiliary Power Units, which provide hydraulic power to the aero control surfaces.

Update, 7:36 AM CDT: Discovery’s three APUs are now fired up and ready to go. She’s now about ten minutes away from Entry Interface, where there’s enough atmosphere for the aero control surfaces to have effect.

Update, 8:26 AM CDT: Discovery touched down about ten minutes ago. She and her crew and home and safe. It’s a GOOD Monday!