Plan to Move Space Shuttle Work Out of State Blasted : * Employment: A NASA decision that affects 500 jobs in Palmdale is under fire from the congressional delegation and the governor’s office.

WASHINGTON —  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s plan to transfer work modifying space shuttles from Palmdale to its Kennedy Space Center in Florida has triggered protests from California’s congressional delegation and the governor’s office.

The NASA decision affects about 500 jobs at Rockwell International’s Palmdale facility, where five of the orbiters have been assembled since the 1970s and where the space agency has done major modification work on the shuttle fleet.

Rockwell is just completing an upgrading of the Columbia, the oldest shuttle. When that is done, it will have to begin laying off workers at the Mojave Desert facility, Chief Operating Officer Sam Iacobellis said.

Thirty-seven of California’s 45 representatives sent a letter protesting the NASA decision to President Bush this week. Additional letters were sent by Gov. Pete Wilson, Sen. John Seymour and Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), the powerful chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Brown, whose committee authorizes the space agency’s budget, asked NASA Administrator Richard Truly to defer the transfer of work until Brown and the committee’s ranking member, Republican Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania, can review the decision.

The California delegation’s letter, citing the potential loss of industry skills and questioning NASA’s rationale, asserted: “The move would send a message to the people of California that NASA is prepared to ignore their interests and abandon their future. Their many contributions to the many successes of our space program have earned them better treatment.”

The heavy political rhetoric involving the 500 jobs, not a large number in comparison to other aerospace programs, seems to mark a turning point in congressional and state officials’ willingness to work in a bloc--as other state delegations often do to support local jobs, industry officials said.

“This is the power we have not used collectively before,” said Rockwell’s Iacobellis.

Brown said hard times are making a difference. “We are faced with what may be the loss of a couple of hundred thousand aerospace jobs in the next few years,” he said. “There is nothing like that to create cooperation in an aerospace community.”

Leonard Nicholson, NASA’s director of the space shuttle program, said the cost of modification programs planned for the Atlantis and Discovery space vehicles would be $20 million to $40 million higher for each shuttle done at Palmdale than at the Kennedy center.

Nicholson said the agency has not changed its plans to transfer the work to Kennedy, but added: “We are not doing anything to preclude a reconsideration if that becomes necessary.”