Company
ActiveLockheed Martin
Bethesda · Since 1995
Still independent, formed by merging Lockheed and Martin Marietta. It remains a prime contractor for aircraft and spacecraft.
A later timeline chapter projects a role for this organization. That chapter is a projection. This page is about the institution as it exists, or as it existed.
Lockheed Martin was formed in 1995 by merging Lockheed with Martin Marietta, two defense contractors that already traced their work to the early aircraft industry. The combination builds fighter jets, missiles, satellites, and the Orion spacecraft.
It is a prime contractor. A government program hires Lockheed Martin, and Lockheed Martin hires a pyramid of suppliers. The employment sits in that pyramid as much as in Bethesda. A space chapter that needs suits, vehicles, and spare parts is, in practice, describing this kind of firm before it describes a colonist.
The program office
Engineers and machinists build the object. A larger, less photographed staff writes the proposal, manages the subcontractors, and reports to a contracting officer. Clearance is a condition of the job, which makes this workforce less fluid than a software company's. People stay because leaving can mean leaving the only employer allowed to use what they know. That stickiness is part of why a new space venture hires from these firms rather than training from zero.
The contractor, not the colony
Lockheed Martin is independent and busy with current military and civil programs. The 2070 chapter's interplanetary workforce is a projection, and a skeptical one. The company's role in any such program, if it happened, would be the role it has now: build the hardware, on Earth, with a staff that goes home at the end of the shift.
The work it organized
- Aerospace engineer
- Machinist
- Program manager
- Contracts specialist