Space shuttle fuel tank program finished in La. ?

After 37 years of playing a major role in the U.S. space program, Lockheed Martin Corp. made it official: The era of building space shuttle fuel tanks at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility is over, along with scores of jobs. The company completed laying off about 800 shuttle program employees this month, leaving about 600 with tenuous future employment. Lockheed Martin says most of those remaining are working on a component for the Constellation program, which Congress wants to get rid of, and providing launch and landing services for the soon-to-be-discontinued shuttle program. Two shuttle launches remain on the schedule, for Nov. 1 and Feb. 26. In addition, Congress passed a NASA funding bill Wednesday that calls for an additional mission in 2011. But Lockheed Martin spokesman Marion LaNasa says that all the giant external fuel tanks and hardware have been delivered to the Kennedy Space Center—enough for three additional missions. The last of the 136 external fuel tanks built at Michoud arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 27. LaNasa says all workers have been laid off and the assembly line has been shut down. The shuttle payroll had already dwindled from a height of 5,000 employees in the 1980s to 1,438 on Jan. 1.