Among the many, many provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed last month by President Donald Trump is one that will have a direct, positive impact on Louisiana: an extra $9.9 billion for NASA space programs, including the one that is intended to take astronauts back to the moon.
Key elements of that program take place on the Gulf Coast at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East and at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
Those facilities support thousands of jobs, ranging from highly technical engineers to skilled tradesmen and laborers. Those industries and jobs have long been economic boons to our region.
The renewed funding averts what some had feared could be catastrophic cuts after some in the Trump administration, including Elon Musk, mused publicly about ending funding for government programs to support space flight.
Earlier proposals would have ended the program after Artemis 3, a manned mission to the moon currently planned for March 2027. But the OBBB funds the program through Artemis 4 and 5 and into the 2030s.
Getting the funding put back into the budget was largely the work of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who argued that cutting it would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage to China.
We are, of course, grateful that the programs, especially Artemis, will be fully funded. Important parts of every Artemis mission, including the main stage rocket, are assembled at Michoud, and the program's rocket engines are tested at Stennis.
The bill's passage has come at the same time as other good news for Michoud and Stennis. After a NASA contractor filed notice with the state that it intended to lay off hundreds of workers in Louisiana when its contract ended at the end of June, the new contractor, Nova Space Solutions, announced last month that it had rehired almost all of those workers.
What's more, the company went above a NASA-imposed requirement that it honor an existing deal with unionized workers at the facilities for one year and forged an additional three-year pact. The average hourly wage for United Auto Workers union members at Michoud will now be just under $40 per hour. Nova executives noted in a statement that they were both former union members, something that aided the negotiations.
In addition, earlier cuts announced by Boeing were smaller than expected. The company originally said it might have to cut 400 workers across three space facilities, including Michoud, but the company ended up cutting fewer than 200.
We are heartened by these developments and what they mean, not just for America's forays into the final frontier, but for us close to home. Beyond employment and salary numbers, our region can be proud of its contribution to mankind's boldest explorations.