Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture leads the list of NASA’s Washington state contractors in a newly released analysis of the agency’s economic impact.
The analysis came out today when NASA released data showing how many jobs and how many procurement dollars were generated during fiscal year 2021 in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. NASA said this is the first time it has drafted state-specific fact sheets to complement its Economic Impact Report.
“With the president’s fiscal year 2024 budget announcement this week, NASA will remain an economic engine that supports good-paying American jobs, sustains American innovation and strengthens American competitiveness in the 21st century,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a news release. “Our impressive economic impact just scratches the surface of the agency’s influence around the world, and it makes clear that what is good for NASA is good for communities across the country.”
Nationwide, NASA supported more than 339,600 jobs in fiscal year 2021 (which ran from October 2020 to the end of September 2021), based on a multiplier that accounts for direct and indirect economic effects. The space agency said its activities generated more than $71.2 billion in economic output during the fiscal year. Washington state accounted for 4,622 of the jobs resulting from NASA’s economic impact, $1.06 billion in economic output and $426.6 million in NASA procurements.
NASA’s figures showed that more than half of the FY2021 procurements directed toward Washington state — $275,900,431 — went to Blue Origin, headquartered in Kent, Wash. Although the fact sheet doesn’t go into detail about the programs supported by that money, NASA has provided Blue Origin with funding for lunar lander development efforts, suborbital research projects and other space studies.
Aerojet Rocketdyne’s operation in Redmond, Wash., was No. 2 on NASA’s list for Washington state, with $15,744,742 in procurements. Aerojet’s Redmond team builds thrusters for a wide array of NASA spacecraft, ranging from the Artemis moon program’s Orion capsule and SLS rocket to the Perseverance rover that touched down on Mars in 2021.
Rounding out Washington state’s top five were Everett-based MagniX ($5.43 million in procurements), which is receiving NASA support to demonstrate electric aviation technologies; Vancouver-based nLight Photonics ($1.03 million), which provides high-power laser systems for NASA’s use; and Seattle-based Northwest Research Associates ($772,491), which focuses on sensor systems.
Speaking of research, the University of Washington led NASA’s list for education funding going to Washington state institutions, with $19.19 million in funding. Washington State University, Western Washington University and Northwest Indian College also received education funding from the agency.
Even though only 19 NASA federal jobs were listed as being based in Washington, the state ranked seventh in the nation in state-by-state procurements for FY2021, and 10th in the number of direct and indirect jobs supported.
NASA isn’t the only entity that’s having an economic impact on Washington state’s space industry, said Stan Shull, the founder of a Bellevue, Wash.-based consulting firm for space and software companies called Alliance Velocity. In an email to GeekWire, Shull pointed to the satellite operations that have been set up in the Seattle area by SpaceX, Amazon and LeoStella, plus the privately funded work being done at companies such as Blue Origin and Spaceflight Inc.
“While the NASA funding and some national security space contracts in Washington state have been valuable for the region, the area’s space ecosystem is largely home-grown and uniquely entrepreneurial,” Shull said. “We just don’t have the major federal space or defense presence that places like Houston, Los Angeles, Colorado or Florida have.”
Despite those deficiencies, the Seattle-area space economy has fostered dozens of space companies, employing thousands of people and generating billions of dollars of economic impact annually, Shull said.
“It also has surprising breadth,” he added. “It encompasses the entire end-to-end space and satellite value chain, from component manufacturing to satellites to rockets to space infrastructure and space communications and data services. While we may not be the largest space state, our modest but mighty space ecosystem could become a global space powerhouse going forward.”
For what it’s worth, California was the state accounting for the most NASA procurements in FY2021 ($4.5 billion) and the most jobs supported by NASA-related activities (66,236, including jobs created by indirect economic effects). The Golden State is home to three NASA centers: Ames Research Center, Armstrong Flight Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Maryland, the home of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, accounted for the most NASA federal jobs (3,128, as opposed to 1,812 such jobs in California).
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