Jobs at Alaska's Kodiak Spaceport
When you analyze the brief Alaska Spaceport story, you find out a lot about how hard it is to keep a spaceport busy. The spaceport is owned and funded by the State of Alaska through the Alaska Aerospace Corporation.
Alaska Aerospace lays off 5 Kodiak-based workers
August 21, 2012 AP Staff Writer, The Associated Press
The story tells us that 5 technical staff were laid off equaling 20% of their staff. This means they had a total of 25 people employed before the layoff. This number surely included: security workers (bare minimum of 5 for 24/7/365 day coverage), facility maintenance (1) and clerical to answer the phone(1). So at the very most, there might have been 17 permanent technical, administrative and operations positions.
When the Kodiak spaceport was built, they installed command and control systems, telemetry, countdown clock and range timing management and 64 computer workstations. Clearly, their plans have never met expectations. (case-study 1)
The laid-off workers were let go in 2012 because a 2013 launch was delayed until 2014. There had been 3 years between launches at Kodiak. Eventually, when that launch occurred on August 15 2014, it was a failure and the spaceport was severely damaged. (story link 2)
But there were some temporary jobs created to clean up the toxic mess. In Spetember 2015 more jobs were created to rebuild the launch tower and repair the damage to the launch site. (story link 3) (story link 4)
There have been a total of 17 launches since Kodiak Spaceport opened in 1998 (recently renamed Pacific Spaceport Complex). There was only one launch for all of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. (story link 5)
The Alaska Aerospace's News page does not list any scheduled launches for 2016. They sponsered two aerospace interns in 2015 but it is not disclosed whether the positions were at the Kodiak spaceport or the Alaska Aerospace offices in Anchorage. There appears to be a lot of work for their Anchorage public relations staff. (story link 6)
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER
Alaska Economic Trends, June 2010
"The only economic development in Kodiak with virtually no ties to fishing is the Kodiak Launch Complex, which was built in 1998 on Narrow Cape, 44 miles south of the city of Kodiak."
What does it cost the taxpayers of Alaska to keep Kodiak open?
Doesn't Alaska have oil revenue that Camden does not?
How many jobs were originally predicted by the sponsors of Kodiak Spaceport?
How much has Alaska spent, and what can they prove are the direct financial benefits after 16 years of operations?
What space-related manufacturing jobs have been created in Kodiak, or Alaska, due to Kodiak Spaceport?
If only ONE commercial launch has ever been made from Kodiak,
is there a demand for Spaceport Camden to support operations without taxpayer support?
Is the State of Georgia willing to subsidise Spaceport Camden for 20 years?
