That vehicle “works” at an exorbitant price and only every other year – if that. It is not of practical use for any long-term purpose.

Wayne Hale used to say that Shuttle operations engineers used to get nervous any time the flight cadence dropped below four times a year. There was a sense that this was the minimum frequency needed to assure an acceptable working familiarity with the STS systems for reasonably safe operation.

Somehow, we’re not nervous at all about a HSF vehicle that can hardly even fly once per year even once it hits its stride. Is it any surprise that the agency level probability risk assessment for SLS/Orion is only 1 in 75?

That vehicle “works” at an exorbitant price and only every other year – if that. It is not of practical use for any long-term purpose.

You seem to think Huntsville consists entirely of MSFC and nothing else. There is a lot of space employment there beyond MSFC. The ex-MSFC-ers can either get hired on by one of the many pilot fish outfits there, or by Blue Origin or even by ULA – for at least awhile. Blue Origin would be the better bet – particularly if, as I hope, that company soon gets an unfunded Space Act Agreement to develop a second substitute for SLS-Orion in addition to Starship.

Or, failing any of these options, the ex-MSFC-ers can move to one of the other places where space-related skills are in demand – the FL Space Coast, Starbase, Southern California. I’m sympathetic to the disruption involved but I’ve been laid off a number of times in my life, often when the company in question slipped beneath the waves and I was left treading water. I’ve relocated a couple of times too. Not pleasant in the short term, but also not the end of the world. No one is entitled to draw a government salary in perpetuity for doing nothing of value.

Every NASA center has immovable facilities. In the case of JSC it’s the astronaut training infrastructure including the enormous Neutral Buoyancy pool. With more and more nations – especially Artemis Accords signatories – wanting to fly astronauts, such training facilities will be even more useful in future years than they are now. Once commercial LEO space stations and regular – and frequent – missions to the Moon are a thing a few years hence, it may even prove necessary to expand JSC’s training facilities rather than shut them down.

And that is without even considering the move of NASA HQ from DC. JSC is the most reasonable of extant NASA centers to host such a repotting. But KSC is also bidding for NASA HQ’s relocation. In the end, politics may dictate that each gets part of NASA’s current HQ functions. I could see what is now the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate moving to Houston while the Space Operations Mission Directorate moves to KSC. The remaining mission directorates could either be split between JSC and KSC or repotted to other NASA centers more aligned with their missions.

And then there is the matter of proximity to launch sites. The KSC-Canaveral complex will not be the only significant US astronaut launch facility going forward. Starbase will also be such even though not a NASA facility. Houston is closer to Starbase than it is to KSC-Canaveral.

All of this is not to say that there are no extant NASA centers that should not be closed. The top of my personal better-off-dead list is MSFC in Huntsville. SLS and Orion have no long-term future and NASA is never again going to be in the launch vehicle design business. That’s most of what Marshall does. It needs to be closed, radically downsized or radically repurposed.

Next on my list is Langley. Langley has immovable infrastructure – wind tunnels and such – but they are all older and smaller than those at Ames. And the entire physical plant at Langley is crumbling away from lack of maintenance. I think a fork needs to be stuck in it.

Third on my list is Goddard. The entire Science Mission Directorate needs an enema, but Goddard is responsible for the absurd cost and schedule overruns of the JWST. JPL has its own profligacy and incompetence problems as well – Mars Sample Return being front and center – and Psyche also being a recent bad memory. The entire SMD, frankly, needs a comprehensive spanking. And we certainly do not need two spendthrift space probe shops going forward. I’m indifferent as to whether it’s JPL or Goddard that gets canned, but JPL isn’t, technically, a NASA center and Goddard is, so it should be less complicated to shut down Goddard. Whichever one goes, the survivor should get a top-to-bottom management replacement at a minimum.

There are certainly other trims and tucks that need to be made to NASA, but the preceding list is my Big Three.

But both TX and FL have even more logical places to plop down a repotted NASA HQ. TX has JSC in Houston. FL has KSC.

As long as NASA HQ exits DC by 2028, I’m pretty much agnostic about where it fetches up.