High joblessness in the home of U.S. space flight

(CBS News) When the last space shuttle took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July -- when the crowds left and 7,000 space center workers lost their jobs -- what happened to Brevard County, Florida? Scott Pelley tells the story of a county struggling with the loss of its largest employer, and of former shuttle workers who miss both the paycheck and the deep pride they had in their work.

The following script is from "Hard Landing" which aired on April 1, 2012. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Robert Anderson and Nicole Young, producers.

President Obama canceled NASA's plan to replace the space shuttle in favor of a more modest program, and then Congress slashed the funding for that. So, for the first time in 50 years America is not the leader in spaceflight. Fact is, we couldn't launch an astronaut today if we had to. With the end of an era, we wondered what would happen to the generation that put America in space. So last July when the smoke cleared from the last space shuttle launch we stayed behind in Brevard County, Florida. The home of the Kennedy Space Center. What comes after reaching for the stars? For many, in Brevard County the answer is: a hard landing.

There was nothing like it in the world, arguably the greatest engineering achievement of man. At liftoff, it weighed four and a half million pounds, its top speed 17,000 miles an hour.

[The space shuttle spreads its wings one final time for the start of its sentimental journey into history.]

It was built by the hands of people like Lou Hanna.

Lou Hanna: It was the experience and the job of a lifetime. I was working with Pad one day, with a friend of mine. And he's a crane operator too. And I ask him, I said, "How many other crane operators do you suppose that there are doing what we're doing? There's two, you and me."

From Cronkite to Pelley: Covering the NASA era

Shuttle work wasn't just work. There was enormous pride in doing for America what no other workers in the world could even dare. Lou Hanna manned a gigantic crane that cleared the platform before launch. He worked on the first shuttle in 1981. And the last, 135 missions later.

Scott Pelley: What did seeing the last shuttle launch mean to you?

Lou Hanna: I felt anger.

Scott Pelley: Anger?

Lou Hanna: Oh, yeah. Because this does not have to be the last launch. It doesn't have to end this way. I mean, it, it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't compute. I guess I'm still in denial because I'm thinking they're gonna call me back one day. "We got a launch coming up. We need your help." How can they do that?

They did it to save three billion dollars a year. Now the only way an American can fly into space is to buy a seat on a Russian rocket. At the Kennedy Space Center, 7,000 workers lost their jobs.

Fifty years of liftoffs are becoming eight months of layoffs.

[The space shuttle pulls into port for the last time.]

Have a look around Brevard County. It's shrinking. Lots of people are moving away taking businesses down with them.

Chris Milner: It was like, bam, gone. Gone. Gone.

The work ethic that built the shuttle keeps Chris Milner fighting to hang on.

Scott Pelley: How long did you work at the space center?

Chris Milner: Eight years.

Scott Pelley: And your wife?

Chris Milner: 29 years.

Scott Pelley: Both laid off?

Chris Milner: Both laid off.

In the spirit of an entrepreneur, Milner planned for the layoffs. Five years ago he launched a landscape business on the side. And then he added a sign shop in this industrial park. Still, there was one thing he didn't plan on.

Chris Milner: Seafood it's gone. There's nothing there. Edwards Exterminating is the only one that's left, it's right around the corner. But basically everything's empty. It's a nightmare.

Chris Milner: Everybody that's been laid off. It's a ripple effect. Businesses closing down, it affects everybody else and it affects me.

The 7,000 layoffs at the space center triggered 7,000 more in the community. Unemployment has been close to 11 percent.

Chris Milner: People are moving away. People are going in up north. Nothing's happening here. I know people that move all the way to Seattle. For a job. Left their house. Left the key in the front door. Here ya go. It's gone.

Milner had 12 employees in the lawn business. Now he has three.

Scott Pelley: You know, you are running these two businesses.

Chris Milner: Yes.

Scott Pelley: How many hours a day are you working?

Chris Milner: Literally?

Scott Pelley: Literally.

Chris Milner: I'm here at 7 a.m. in the morning. And you know, the last couple weeks I've been here until 1-2 o'clock in the morning. My last day off was Christmas.

Scott Pelley: Working 17-hours a day, seven days a week can't be all that good for your health.

Chris Milner: No. My wife's worried. She's scared. She's told me that.

And she's taken out a life insurance policy on him.

Chris Milner: But at the same time, she knows what I gotta do. And the problem is we have a 12-year-old at the house that doesn't understand 'cause he's never had to go without. He's constantly asking for McDonald's. We don't get McDonald's anymore.

This isn't the first hard landing on the space coast. There were big layoffs in 1972 after the last mission to the moon. But here's why today is worse. When we left the moon, NASA was already years into designing the shuttle. And it looked like it would be that way now because President Bush approved a program to follow the shuttle.

Scott Pelley: The new man space program rocket was supposed to be called Constellation.

Group: Uh huh. (affirm)

Scott Pelley: And now you guys call it---

Group: Cancellation.

Holly Petrucci: Unfortunately.

Lou Hanna, and Joe Urich, Holly Petrucci, and Mike Carpenter planned to transfer from shuttle to Constellation. They were encouraged when candidate Barack Obama came to Brevard County in 2008, three months before the election.

[Barack Obama, Titusville Speech, 8/2/08: I'm gonna ensure that our space program doesn't suffer when the shuttle goes out of service by making sure that all those who work in the space industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the shuttle is retired because we can't afford to lose their expertise.]

Mike Carpenter: Well, we were lied to when Obama came through, gave us a lotta hope and supposedly a lotta change. Well, I've got change in my pocket, but the hope is gone.

In 2010, President Obama cancelled Constellation and turned over development of a new spaceship to private enterprise. Then, Congress dealt another blow by cutting the funding for the Obama plan in half. At the very least it will be 5 years before America flies astronauts again. Now the workers with that expertise Mr. Obama referred to are setting course for Carole Bess.

Carole Bess: And I've had several who've told me, "I was considering suicide before I came to you."

Carole Bess is a bankruptcy attorney.

Scott Pelley: What drove them to that point?

Carole Bess: They felt like failures. You know, "Here I am. I can't pay my debts. And I'm probably worth more dead than alive, if I have life insurance."

Scott Pelley: And folks either aren't finding work. Or if they do, they're making a lot less than they were before.

Carole Bess: Correct. And that's not gonna change. These people have no hope. It could still get a lot worse, I think.

Following the Great Recession, we visited a lot of communities that lost their main employer, but never one like Brevard County. We learned about the sense of loss with our first question to Lucas Maxwell, who used to handle the dangerous fuel for the rockets.

Scott Pelley: What was it like when it was launched? Paint that picture for me.

Lucas Maxwell: Awesome. I--

The thought was too much for a moment. Then he came back to tell us why.

Lucas Maxwell: Made your heart stop. It's awesome no matter what, you know, the pride that goes into a vehicle like that. But I knew it was the end too. You know, I knew I was gonna be out on the street.

Scott Pelley: And space shuttle for you, I have the sense was a statement about the country.

Lou Hanna: Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is a matter of national pride.

The end of the shuttle is threatening businesses that families have built over decades. Like "Shuttles" the first bar you come to leaving the space center -- not just a bar really -- it's the place where astronauts land. In July, before the last launch, we stopped in to the see owner Bill Grillo.

Scott Pelley: How many employees did you have at the peak?

Bill Grillo: We had 25.

Scott Pelley: And now?

Bill Grillo: We're down to eight.

Scott Pelley: And you're one of 'em?

Bill Grillo: Yeah. If it comes down to just myself, my son and the cook, we'll hang on. Shuttles will be here. I won't let it go.

Seven months later, this is Shuttles today.

Scott Pelley: I'm sorry about this. When we were here before you were optimistic. You said this place wouldn't close.

Bill Grillo: Yeah. Within 45 days after the last shuttle, we lost 70 percent of our business. We weren't able to sustain. As much as it, it killed me to do that, I had to.

Scott Pelley: And you've been gone for a couple of months now but I don't think you've moved a thing in here.

Bill Grillo: I can't right now. It's, it's too painful to do that. I got a lot of--a lotta my heart is here and I can't take anything off the walls yet.

Scott Pelley: It's not just a business.

Bill Grillo: No. No. This is an institution. And I don't wanna be the one that takes it apart.

No one we met back in July expected to be the one to take apart the life they'd known. Some were the second or third generation in their family to work at the space center. Before the last launch we met several at a jobs center applying for the remaining aerospace work. Sammy Rivera worked on the shuttle 26 years, reviewing engineering drawings.

Sammy Rivera: I figured the day I wake up dead, I won't go to work. That's the bottom line there's not gonna be anything for me to retire on.

We caught up with him today.

Scott Pelley: You didn't expect to be unemployed 11 months and counting.

Sammy Rivera: At the max I figured three months. I've applied for engineering jobs. I've applied for technician jobs. I've applied for entry level jobs.

Scott Pelley: Have you had any interviews?

Sammy Rivera: Three.

Scott Pelley: Total of three?

Sammy Rivera: Total of three.

Scott Pelley: Three interviews in 11 months?

Sammy Rivera: Yes, sir.

Scott Pelley: Do you have health insurance?

Sammy Rivera: No sir. No sir. My health insurance terminated on my last day of employment.

Scott Pelley: How are you getting along?

Sammy Rivera: A lot of prayer. The medications that I was on, out-of-pocket expense, runs me over $800 a month. With no money coming in, I can't afford that.

So he's taking only one of the two pills that his doctors say he has to take to avoid a heart attack.

Scott Pelley: You know, when you're raising that flag in your front yard?

Sammy Rivera: Yes sir.

Scott Pelley: What are you thinking?

Sammy Rivera: This is my country. And I can't let it go down without a fight.

The four remaining shuttles are headed to museums. Atlantis will be on display at the Kennedy Space Center. She was designed for 100 missions but flew only 33. Like so many in Brevard County, Florida, she was pulled from the service of her country, long before she was ready.