THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 19, 1995 TAG: 9505190510
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
Now that early retirement at NASA Langley Research Center has come and gone, parking is easier to find. Some phones take longer to answer because key secretaries have left.
Later this morning, the remaining 5,000 center employees and independent contractors should find out whether or not they keep their jobs - or whether they will join the 272 early retirees.
Administrator Daniel S. Goldin will address all NASA employees on closed-circuit television on final plans to restructure the space agency. The task has been made immeasurably more difficult by recently announced congressional plans to balance the federal budget by the year 2002.
To do so, more than $1 trillion must be shaved from budget outlays.
In an interview with the Washington Post earlier this week, Goldin warned that ``continual cutting by the yard'' could effectively destroy the 37-year-old NASA. Goldin, known for his deft dealings with politicians and agency bureaucrats alike, described himself as ``frustrated'' by the prospects of up to 95 percent cuts at some NASA facilities.
``Americans have to decide whether they want to have a space program,'' Goldin said. ``The next step is to shut it down.''
An internal NASA memo prepared in February urged that all Langley programs having to do with space or space technology - accounting for about 30 percent of the center's research - be moved to other NASA centers around the country.
The Hampton facility could lose nearly all of its research aircraft, the memo suggested, including a recently acquired $24 million Boeing 757, to a sister facility in California.
Given the renewed cost-cutting fervor in Washington, more severe Langley downsizing could also occur. by CNB