United Space Alliance sounds like it should be some kind of interplanetary UN On a sci-fi show, but it is a real company. For those of you show are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “Recognized performance. Efficient, reliable products and services. Innovative solutions for operating complex systems. This is United Space Alliance. We leverage our experience and expertise for customers in the defense, civil and commercial space, and energy industries. Our broad skill set uniquely qualifies us to help customers develop new concepts, systems and operations that will support today’s challenges on Earth and tomorrow’s exploration of space.”

The company is getting ready to cut back on 157 jobs in its current round of layoffs. The bulk of the layoffs will be coming from workers who are currently at Kennedy Space Center. That location will lose 121 jobs, enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The only good news is that a mass layoff action means that workers must be given some advance notice before they are taken off of the payroll.

Interestingly enough the company has not put out a release about the job cuts to come. Instead they wrote about the latest space mission, “When Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft touch down at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Friday, the orbiter will be greeted by some old friends. An operations team from United Space Alliance, NASA’s Prime Shuttle contractor, is standing by at the airport, ready to surround the aircraft, lift it from the top of the SCA and place it on a transporter.  That team is part of a workforce that has been responsible for maintaining and launching the orbiters for decades. Once the orbiters were retired, the USA team began preparing each of them – Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour – for museum display, and has been assisting in transporting the vehicles to their new locations in Virginia, California, and the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex in Florida. USA also assisted in preparing Enterprise, NASA’s test orbiter, and transporting the vehicle to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.”

They are, as you can imagine, not the only space company to make cuts. Space Systems/Loral made recent cuts as well, “The company is getting ready to cut back on about 90 jobs from its facility. All of the jobs to be cut are coming from the jobs in Palo Alto. This is more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current guidelines set by the federal government.”