PICAYUNE — “Where do you work?”

“Michoud” (Pronounced “Me’-Shoe.”).

For years that meant to Pearl River County and Picayune residents that you worked on the Space Shuttle program. That is now gradually changing as the work on the external tank for the Space Shuttle winds down at Michoud.

Many here still think Michoud is a company that is manufacturing the large part of the space hardware being constructed at Michoud.

Those who work there know it is Lockheed Martin that had the contract for the External Tanks for the Shuttle.

Michoud was the name of the facility in which the workers toiled, Michoud Assembly Facility, and Lockheed Martin was the contractor that worked for NASA, which owns the Michoud facility.

Now Lockheed Martin is winding down the External Tank contract and rolled out the last one on July 8.

About 1,000 people, including Louisiana political officials, gathered to see off the last external tank to Kennedy Space Center. Louisiana politicians bewailed the ending of the Space Shuttle program.

The first external tank poked its nose out of the huge assembly building on Sept. 9, 1977. At its height, Lockheed Martin employed 2,700. Its employment figures have dwindled and will continue to do so as the Space Shuttle program comes to an end.

The Michoud facility at one time housed 12,000 workers but now is down to about 3,100. Not all were associated with the space program, but most were.

Officials at Michoud say that although Lockheed Martin is winding down on external tank production, NASA’s Michoud facility still is a vibrant facility with a number of companies and contractors that, as of July 1, employed over 3,100 people.

The hunt for additional tenants is underway all the time, says John Filostrat, a public affairs officer with Jacobs, the facility manager for NASA.

Says Filostrat, “The whole facility covers 832 acres, and the manufacturing building alone covers 43 acres under one roof. And one big thing about Michoud is we have a deep-water port you can ship large-scale hardware out of. That’s very important and makes us a unique facility.”

Lockheed Martin officials liked to point out that the external tank the company constructed for the Shuttle was 154 feet long, longer than Orville Wright’s first flight of 120 feet in 1903. At the height of the Space Shuttle program, Lockheed Martin employed over 2,000 at Michoud.

Officials also pointed out that at 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet in length, the external tank, or ET, is the largest component of the Space Shuttle system.

At its peak, Lockheed Martin was one of the largest employers in New Orleans. The deep-water port at Michoud allowed the company to tow the finished ET on a barge over the Gulf of Mexico, around the tip of Florida and up to Kennedy Space Center.

The hundreds of Pearl River County residents who worked there, and those familiar with the facility, knew that Michoud was a place designation and knew who it was who was building the external tank, which was strapped to the belly of the Shuttle at launch and provided the fuel to carry the Shuttle into orbit.

Actually, Michoud is an historic family name for a former 19th century sugar plantation baron who acquired the land in the 1800s.

Michoud is 15 miles from Bourbon Street and 24 miles from the international airport in Kenner. It is in New Orleans East.

The original tract of land was part of a 34,500-acre French Royal land grant to a local merchant in 1763. By the early 1800s, the land was owned by an architect-engineer, a Mr. Lafon, whose maps aided Gen. Andrew Jackson in defeating the British at Chalmette in 1815. The Battle of New Orleans battlefield is nearby.

In the early 1800s, a French transplant Antoine Michoud, the son of Napoleon’s Administrator of Domains, acquired the land. Michoud operated a sugar cane plantation and refinery until his death in 1863. His heirs then kept the land intact. Two smokestacks from the original refinery still stand in front of the facility.

Right before the U.S. entered World War II in 1940, the U.S. government purchased 1,000 acres and constructed a facility covering 43 acres. During the war, plywood cargo planes and landing craft rolled off assembly lines at the site, built by the Andrew Higgings.

During the Korean war, the facility produced 12-cylinder air-cooled engines for Sherman and Patton tanks.

In 1961, NASA acquired the facility and at first during the race to the moon, Saturn S1B and S1C boosters were built there and shipped to the test site in Hancock County to be tested.

In the 1970s, construction of the external tank began when the Apollo program wound down and work began on the Space Shuttle program.

Michoud is close to Pearl River County,  making it a great place to work for those living in rural Pearl River County.

The commute is interstate all the way just down Interstate 59 every morning, hang a left toward Chalmette, and its a few miles down the Chalmette highway. From downtown Picayune, it takes about 45 minutes to get there; sometimes it’s even quicker if the traffic is flowing smoothly.

Another route is the Irish Bayou cutoff on old Hwy. 11 right after going across the Twin Spans, then right on  at old Power’s Junction.

Now, with the end of America’s Space Shuttle program, the external tank program is winding down.

The last external tank, ET 138, was rolled out on July 8 in a ceremony, honoring the current and former employees of the program. The Shuttle program began 37 years ago at Michoud. ET 138 will be used in the Space Shuttle’s last flight on Feb. 26, 2011.

There is a possibility that an additional flight will be approved next year by NASA, but it remains to be seen what will happen as President Obama reshapes the NASA space program.

The reason why there is a possibility for one more flight after Feb. 26 is that Lockheed Martin is finishing up on one last tank, ET 122, which was damaged during Katrina five years ago. That tank technically will be the last one and is scheduled to be delivered in September.

“ET-122 is a launch-on-need tank and could be used if NASA decides to add another  Space Shuttle mission next year,” said Filostrat.

Filostrat said while most people associate Michoud with the Space Shuttle program entirely, the facility houses nine companies and governmental operations and agencies. He estimates that a third of 3,100 workers at Michoud live on the North Shore, in Slidell, St. Tammany, and Picayune, Pearl River County.

The companies and agencies and number of employees are: USDA 1,275, Lockheed 1,025, Jacobs 450, U.S. Coast Guard 250, Coastal 81, GEOCENT 26, NASA 14, Boeing 12 and UNO 10.

Lockheed Martin’s motto is “We never forget who we’re working for.”

Many retired employees of the company live in Pearl River County and draw retirement checks from the company.

Lockheed Martin, besides the ET contract, also has contracts with NASA for development of the Orion crew capsule that is the next generation of space flight hardware.

News reports from Washington said that on Thursday the Senate Commerce Committee, following a long drawn-out debate over the future of the NASA program, approved a $19 billion bill giving the White House most of what it sought for the space program.

Included in that bill was $1.2 billion requested by the White House for work on NASA’s multi-purpose crew vehicles, the Orion capsule, and associated programs being developed under contracts with Lockheed Martin.

The bill still has hurdles to clear but Lockheed Martin hopefully still has a long presence at Michoud.

Larry Davis of Picayune, now retired, worked at Michoud twice, once on the Saturn rockets back in the early 1970s and again on the ETs for Lockheed Martin. “It was a great job, as jobs go; great benefits and good pay. I enjoyed it. Of course, it doesn’t beat retirement, but for a job it was a great place to work,” he said.

While working on the Saturn rockets, he worked for Boeing.