Working week: Greying space industry looks for its stars of the future

Plans for a return to the Moon, a manned mission to Mars and the birth of space tourism are garnering a lot of headlines, but it is attrition due to an ageing workforce that may offer most of the opportunities in the space industry in the coming years.

A report commissioned by NASA last year found that, by 2011, nearly half of the organisation's scientists and more than a quarter of its engineers will be eligible for retirement. Only a quarter of engineers and scientists at the agency are under 40. The industry in Europe is also affected by the same demographic factors.

"We're going to [see] a general increase in demand for mainly replacement staff in the next two years, because there's a massive generation who will be retiring," says HE Space Operations, which supplies contract staff to the European space industry.

"There are definitely a growing number of opportunities at the moment," says Claudia Kessler, the company's managing director for Germany.

Although less than 10% of those the company places with its space industry clients come from a mainstream aerospace background, there is crossover in a number of specialist areas, such as mechanical and structural engineering, stress analysis, mechanical design and quality assurance.

"At the moment we are searching for a number of people who will probably have to come out of the aerospace or aeronautics sector. We need a number of fatigue and stress engineers and these are found mainly in the aeronautic sector," Kessler says.

For the right candidate the rewards are good. "Salaries are high," Kessler says. "This is true for the space industry in general, and the institutions may be a bit higher. But employees are required to bring a lot of flexibility, and to be experts in their field."

Source: Flight International