WASHINGTON - MORE money for Nasa in any an economic stimulus package would create jobs now and shore up the US leadership in aerospace, Nasa Administrator Michael Griffin said on Tuesday.

'Aerospace exports are one of the few really positive balance of trade items for us,' Mr Griffin told reporters at a Space Foundation event, adding that investing in Nasa programmes would create high-paying jobs in a large number of states.

'Aerospace jobs jump-start the economy,' said Mr Griffin, who said he would be glad to stay on in his job under the Obama administration, but did not expect to be asked.

Prime contractors for the Constellation shuttle replacement program include Boeing Co , Alliant Techsystems Inc , Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies Corp unit, which are building the new Ares rocket; and Lockheed Martin Corp , which is developing the Orion capsule spacecraft.

'If you accelerate Ares and Orion as shuttle replacement vehicles, you provide immediate jobs to all of the aerospace states, which is quite a large number. That's immediate. I can start buying parts tomorrow if I have the money,' he said.

Mr Griffin said President-elect Barack Obama's new administration faces critical decisions on aerospace:

- Whether to keep the orbiting international space station operating beyond 2015;

- Whether to extend shuttle operations beyond the planned retirement of the fleet in 2010 at a cost of about US$3 billion (S$4.4 billion) a year for two flights, or continue current plans that call for Russia to ferry US crews to the station for five years;

- Whether to speed up the launch of the first shuttle replacement to 2014 from 2015 at a cost of under US$4 billion;

- Whether to fund an additional shuttle flight to bring the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a physics experiment that will examine the formation of the universe, to the space station.

All of these decisions need to be made by summer, he said, citing the need to start buying parts for the programs in question if they were to proceed.

Mr Griffin said he supported efforts to include funding for some of these initiatives in a massive economic stimulus package and had discussed the matter with lawmakers.

Nasa saw a 20 per cent decline in funding during the eight years of the Clinton administration, when measured in constant dollars, and had stabilised at the lower level during the Bush administration, Mr Griffin said. Congressional committees estimate the agency needs US$2 billion to US$3 billion in additional funding each year to pay for all its projects, he added.

He said the United States was still the world leader in aerospace, mostly because of the Apollo programme to put a man on the Moon begun in 1961, and spending under President Ronald Reagan on the space-based Strategic Defence Initiative.

'The advantage we purchased with that is going away. Other nations have not yet surpassed us ... but they're closing in,' he said, adding that the US civilian space programme fostered collaboration with other countries such as Russia and France.

Any move to merge military and civilian space programmes, something suggested by some Obama advisers as a cost-saving measure, would jeopardise those relationships, Mr Griffin said.

President Dwight Eisenhower, a top military commander, had purposely set up Nasa as a civilian agency, and no one had seriously questioned that separation since then.

Paul Kaminski, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer under former President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997, told reporters at a separate event that it would make sense for Nasa and the military to share technologies such as rockets.

That would boost orders and lower costs, especially since satellite launches were down sharply from expected levels, he added. -- REUTERS