"Everyone is starting to feel the pinch. People are not working. They're economizing," said Donna Thrash, who runs a jobs workshop for space workers at Brevard Workforce, the county's career center. "Every launch, this area is full of people and everyone benefits from that. Once that's gone, it's going to really hit people that that isn't coming anymore."The Space Coast had years to prepare for the end of the space feather hair extensionsshuttle. But the announcement in 2004 occurred in a different era — a time when Florida's unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, the housing boom was fueling construction growth and the Space Coast had the highest property values in central Florida. Now, unemployment is at 10.6 percent, growth has disappeared and for-sale signs dot neighborhoods.The space program has a hold on the area that goes beyond jobs and strikes at the identity of this region stretching along Florida's central Atlantic Coast. This was a sleepy coastal area known for citrus and resort hotels before it was picked in the late 1950s to be the site for the United States' blasts into the space age.With the launches of Saturn rockets, the communities of Titusville, Cape Canaveral, Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach gained an influx of highly educated engineers, project managers and technicians, and aerospace became the Space Coast's dominant industry.Even the area code is 3-2-1. Elementary schools are named for the shuttles and there's Astronaut High School and Satellite High School. Locals ate at the Moon Hut restaurant before it closed, and visitors can sleep in a bed feather hair extensions wholesaleshaped like a space shuttle at the Best Western Space Shuttle Inn in Titusville.Restaurants and businesses already are feeling the belt-tightening as residents stay home to save money. After July, it will be a long while before hotels are booked up like they usually are for shuttle launches. Hundreds of thousands of spectators pour into Brevard County, which ordinarily is home to a half million residents.