About 400 employees involved in Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket program will lose their jobs due to asset allocation, revisions to NASA’s Artemis program plan and related costs. This is under the leadership of CEO Kelly Ortberg, who is looking to optimize the company’s structure.
The company said workers affected by the layoffs would receive 60-day layoff notices in the coming weeks. Boeing is also trying to find ways to move employees to other positions within the company rather than laying them off.
“We are working to minimize job losses by actively seeking options to reallocate employees across the organization,” a Boeing spokesperson said in comments to Reuters.
The cuts will affect more than a third of the personnel involved in the SLS program, a key component of the Artemis mission. This NASA program, initiated back during the Donald Trump administration, aims to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission. The total budget for the project is estimated at 93 billion as of 2025.
The SLS rocket debuted in November 2022 after more than a decade of development. It launched the Orion spacecraft into space, which flew around the Moon in automatic mode without a crew and successfully returned to Earth. This launch was a key step in realizing Artemis’ ambitious campaign.
Boeing’s positive forecast
In parallel, Boeing released a forecast that airlines in India and South Asia would purchase 2,835 new commercial airplanes over the next 20 years. This figure is almost four times the current level.
Boeing’s previous forecast, released last year, estimated a need for 2,705 airplanes. According to Ashwin Naidu, Boeing’s commercial marketing manager for the region, the increase in demand is due to the increased availability of air transportation.
“Airlines will need modern, fuel-efficient airplanes to meet this demand over the next two decades,” Naidu said.
Staff reductions in the SLS program and optimistic airline growth forecasts indicate that Boeing is in a phase of major change, balancing cost optimization and seeking new markets.
We previously reported on how the SLS rocket for the Artemis lunar program was in danger of being canceled.
