Florida’s Space
Coast has been
the heartbeat of the
nation’s aerospace
industry since the
1950s.
Guided by former President George W. Bush’s call in 2004, the shuttle was
to complete its last mission in 2010 commanding a new era of spacecraft
carrying humans to the International Space Station and beyond. It was
officially retired in 2011.
The challenge of a new day in space exploration could be exciting, if it
weren’t for the reality of thousands of jobs being eliminated without a
tentative timeline of a viable replacement for the Shuttle.
The Shuttle shut-down meant a loss of about 10,000 jobs that resulted in
Brevard County reaching an unemployment rate of 11.8 percent in January
2010 at the height of the recession. It exceeded the federal unemployment
rate of 9.7 percent during the same time.
at the Cape
Cape Canaveral on The Corridor’s East
According to the Economic Development Commission (EDC) of Florida’s
Coast, located in Brevard County, supported
Space Coast, one factor that kept the number from rising even higher was
missile launches years before the space race
foresight.
began and hosts launch pads that have sent
astronauts to the moon, space probes into
“We did have the luxury to know this impending storm was
deep space and satellites into orbit.
coming, where in a lot of economies this happens over years, and
The Space Coast is where you take the pulse
of the industry, and as such, took a massive hit
when federal agendas and budgets called for
historically people don’t realize it’s taking place until one day they
look out the window and they have a decimated economy,” said
Lynda Weatherman, EDC president & CEO.
a new vision for space exploration. However,
the Cape is making a comeback.
The region could not afford to lose the talent that makes Brevard County
attractive to aerospace employers. For the EDC, the answer to keeping
Tough Times
As the economy spiraled downward following
dark clouds of gloom from becoming a permanent fixture over the region
was to diversify jobs along the Space Coast.
the bust of a housing bubble in 2008,
technicians, engineers and specialists at the
Cape were staring at an inevitable event
on the horizon – the decommissioning of the
Space Shuttle.
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