Panel Will Look At What Hardware Is Available
The future cost of developing and operating manned space flight hardware is “one of the important issues” tha a review panel will consider, but the $6.9 billion already spent on the Constellation Program developing a new spacecraft system is “not a consideration.”
So said Norm Augustine, who will lead a sweeping review of how manned space flight should be conducted and what hardware should be built for the missions, a review that NASA and President Obama want him to lead.
The panel is called the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans, the White House announced.
At issue is whether, years into the Constellation Program, NASA should perhaps abandon the Ares I rocket development, a rocket that is to loft the Orion space capsule and its crew into orbit beginning with an initial flight in 2015.
While Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] is developing Orion, others lead development of the Ares I rocket. Sections of that lifter are being developed separately by The Boeing Co. [BA], Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].
Some in the Obama administration think it might be cheaper and money-saving to drop the Ares I rocket, and substitute an existing military rocket, or rockets, the Delta IV and Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELV) made by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed.
Augustine, retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed, said the money already spent on the Constellation Program won’t be considered by the panel in its review.
Opponents of shifting to the EELV say that would mean billions spent thus far to develop Ares I would be wasted. Also, the EELV wouldn’t perform as well on the moon mission as Ares I.
Asked about wasting money already invested, Augustine said his review team shouldn’t look at past investments in the Constellation Program.
“The amount of money that’s been spent would not be a consideration to us,” he said in a teleconference with space journalists. (Augustine was in Europe at the time.)
But, he said, his team would look at future options, and weigh whether they would cost more or less in coming years.
“What would be a consideration is where we stand today: what hardware is available, what plans are available, and so on, and how that might play into what we do in the future,” he said. “So what’s been spent (on Ares I and Orion) in the past is … probably not an issue to us. What the implications are for the future [would be] a significant implication.”
Augustine also was asked why a study of the most basic, fundamental questions about future U.S. space hardware is being launched only now, years after choices have been made, contracts awarded and money spent on the Orion-Ares system development.
It is wise to review, occasionally, whether a major program is well considered and the best solution, he indicated.
Augustine said the review is a “prudent” step.
While there is “never a perfect time to conduct a study,” he acknowledged, “this is as good a time as any.”
Another matter of timing is how long NASA will be grounded.
The timing of the first flight of the next-generation U.S. spacecraft is critical, because the United States — the only nation to put men on the moon — for half a decade won’t be able to get even one astronaut to low Earth orbit. Former President George Bush Jr. ordered the space shuttle fleet to stop flying on Sept. 30 next year, so he didn’t have to provide added funds for the Constellation Program. And the Constellation Program won’t have its first manned flight until 2015. Meanwhile, American astronauts will have to hitch rides with the Russians on Soyuz space vehicles.
Some proponents of dropping Ares I in favor of EELV say the EELV could be ready for flight sooner, although the EELV isn’t now human-rated. Thus the gap in NASA spaceflight capabilities could be used as an argument for EELV. Augustine was asked about the half-decade gap.
“I’m not thrilled with the fact that we have a gap,” he said. “Things could be done probably that could shorten the gap,” or, on the other hand, things could be done that could lengthen it.
The review panel that he heads will consider the gap, and that “extending the gap is probably not a desirable thing.”
He was asked directly whether his review panel will recommend reopening the question of which hardware should be used in the next-generation U.S. spaceship system, reopening the matter of which architecture is used, and whether that would lead to rebidding the hardware contracts.
But Augustine declined to answer that one, saying instead that “that’s probably a question NASA would have to answer.”
However, he added that “from the perspective of our committee, we will be looking at different architectures as well as the existing architecture.” He declined to predict just what the review panel will recommend.
W. Michael Hawes, associate NASA administrator for program analysis and evaluation, also declined to state specifically that any Constellation contracts will be dropped and the process opened to rebidding, explaining that “any contract action or change is all dependent on the outcome of the review and also the acceptance of the recommendations and comments from the review by NASA and the [Obama] administration.”
Hawes will support the Augustine review panel, which may include astronauts, engineers, industry personnel, government officials and academics among its 10 members. Phil McAlister, an industry veteran, will be the panel executive director.
Augustine said the only spacecraft system the panel will examine is Constellation, and that the panel will come up with just two options, rather than myriad possibilities.
He also said that there is “no sense being unrealistic in putting together a program that can’t be afforded.” If the panel finds that budgeted amounts for exploration programs don’t “make sense,” then the panel should so inform the Obama administration. The Constellation Program already has been criticized for cost growth.
He said the panel would hold open meetings, and that the public could make comments about issues before the panel, including anonymous comments offered via the panel Web site.
This is the second NASA review panel that Augustine has headed. The previous one, the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, issued a report Dec. 17, 1990. To view that report, please go to http://www.freemars.org/history/augustine/index.html on the Web.