The Write Stuff; Commercial Space to add 1,700 Florida jobs but figure may be high | Orlando Sentinel

By Editor, Orlando Sentinel, Posted 01/14/10

Link: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2010/01/commercial-...

"The "1700 jobs" figure is the result of a study by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an umbrella group of companies and organizations promoting the development of commercial human spaceflight.

Florida is expected to lose as many as 7,000 jobs when NASA retires the space shuttle later this year, and finding a way to replace those jobs has become an urgent political issue.

According to a federation release obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, if NASA invests $2.5 billion in private companies working on developing rockets and capsules capable of taking humans into low Earth orbit, the 1,700 Florida jobs would be created over five years.

Obama administration officials and aerospace industry executives say that the White House is considering investing up to $3 billion in commercial space over four years as part of a revamping of the agency’s current human space exploration plans."