and the next day, 3200 layoffs nationwide. the vast majority of those right here around cape canaveral. this is a massive town. everywhere you look you see space memorabilia. even the mcdonald s has space aged flavor. 9,000 total layoffs anticipated after the shuttle program retired. for everybody who has been involved, this is not only emotional but very economic. there are not 9,000 jobs here in brevard county. there aren t. i m not even sure there are those 9,000 similar kinds of jobs in the state of florida. at an afternoon symposium here at the kennedy space center visitor s center they talked about the future and said we are not a one rocket town. be delta andill bedell that atlantis launches and the commercial enterprise has the big test launch with the falcon rocket coming up later this year.
aged flavor. 9,000 total layoffs anticipated after the shuttle program retired. for everybody who has been involved, this is not only emotional but very economic. there are not 9,000 jobs here in brevard county. there aren t. i m not even sure there are those 9,000 similar kinds of jobs in the state of florida. at an afternoon symposium here at the kennedy space center visitor s center they talked about the future and said we are not a one rocket town. be delta andill bedell that atlantis launches and the commercial enterprise has the big test launch with the falcon rocket coming up later this year. shepard: and officials at nasa getting ready to say goodbye to another piece of history the space shuttle flight control room better known as mission control in houston. it is the room with the wavy desks and wall of monitors. nasa built it 16 years ago to
guidance is nominal. propulsion is nominal in the first stage. reporter: so, kyra, right now, everything is nominal. the falcon rocket with the dragon spacecraft on top. a long way to go before you can say this is success. it s about a 3 1/2 hour mission, and they will put the spacecraft into orbit about eight, nine minutes from now. it will orbit the earth twice. a good couple of hours to orbit the earth and if successful, splash down in the pacific ocean, and this would mark the first time that a commercial company has ever successfully re-entered a spacecraft into the atmosphere and splashing it down into the water. up until now only half a dozen
zarrella near the launch site. john, the first launch was aborted. now it looks like we have, what, less than a minute? reporter: yeah. like we said earlier. i m listening in one ear to you and the other to launch control. they are counting us down now. he apparently have resolved what was just a false glitch. less than about 20, 30 seconds here to the liftoff of pace x s falcon rocket with the dragon rocket on board. they re counting down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0! we have liftoff of the falcon 9. stage one. hitch kick. falcon 9 has cleared the tower. can i get script? first stage engines and tanks looking good.
off of mexico. we just haven t gotten confirmation yet from space x. but in fact within the last five minutes or so, they did confirm that they had all three chutes deployed, which is a very good sign which means it re-entered the earth s ot moss fear and apparently re-entered intact. as you mentioned this is the dragon spacecraft. it was put up into orbit by space x, commercial company on its falcon rocket. we are getting confirmation db my producer rich phillips saying it has landed in the water about 500 miles off mexico and according to space x, everything looks great. this according to nasa. nasa officials reporting that. this is historic because it is the first time in history that a commercial company has ever launched a rocket, put a capsule in orbit, orbited the earth and then successfully returned that