NASA Administrator Mike Griffin bluntly told Robert J. Stevens, chairman, president and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT], to stop trying to kill the future Ares I rocket, according to an Orlando Sentinel report quoting anonymous industry officials.
The planned Ares I is part of the Constellation Program developing the next-generation U.S. spaceship system.
While Lockheed has the contract to develop the Orion space capsule crew exploration vehicle in the Constellation Program, separate segments of the Ares I rocket to propel Orion into orbit are being developed by The Boeing Co. [BA], Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX], with no stellar role in the rocket program for Lockheed.
According to the story, Lockheed has moved to have the Ares I development program dropped in favor of using military rockets from a joint Lockheed-Boeing venture, United Launch Alliance (ULA), which offers the Atlas V (Lockheed) and Delta IV (Boeing) lifters known as Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles, or EELVs. A study has been floated to NASA officials and lawmakers claiming it would be cheaper and faster to use the already-existing Atlas V or Delta IV lifters, rather than developing Ares I which is based on existing space shuttle components. Ares I wouldn’t have its first manned flight until 2015.
Griffin told Stevens that ULA is trying to “kill Ares I,” according to the story.
Rumors have erupted in recent months attacking Ares I: that a gust of wind could blow it into its launch tower (a false allegation, according to NASA officials), and that Ares I on paper is so overweight that the crew in the Orion capsule would have to be reduced (also untrue). (Please see stories in Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Nov. 3, and Monday, Dec. 15, 2008.)
The Sentinel story also quoted Griffin separately as saying that someone with a profit motive spotted a chance with the change in White House occupants to reopen the settled question of whether Ares I should be developed and flown, adding that if every time someone with a profit motive revisits acquisition decisions made years before, then NASA can’t make any progress.
That would be classic Griffin directness and honesty. A highly educated and capable administrator who has been praised, lavishly, by members of Congress overseeing NASA, Griffin has shown repeatedly he dares to speak truth to power. He recently told a key aide to President-elect Obama that she wasn’t qualified to judge Ares versus Atlas V/Delta IV, when she inquired how much money might be saved by dropping Ares I, or parts of Constellation.
But the story also states that Lockheed denies it is attempting to kill Ares I.
Senior NASA officials have stressed that dropping Ares I and attempting to use the EELV military rockets instead would cost more and not work well. That also is the judgment of Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, responding to a question from Space & Missile Defense Report. (Please see stories in Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Nov. 3 and Monday, Dec. 22, 2008.)
For example, Steve Cook, NASA director of Exploration Launch Projects guiding the Constellation Program, stressed in a recent media briefing that EELVs would require a major upgrade to handle Orion and its heavy moon mission payload.
Both the Atlas V (legacy Lockheed) and Delta IV (historically Boeing) lifters would have required “a performance bump” to be able to deal with a mission abort capability, and for hauling heavy lunar-mission payloads aloft, Cook said.
Not only would starting over from scratch on Ares cost three years of lost time, it also would cost substantial money, he asserted. “It would cost a whole lot more now, three years in [to the Constellation Program with Ares I], to start over,” he said.
He emphasized that the Ares will be a family of rockets, including the Ares I to loft Orion into space, and the giant heavy-lifting Ares V to take giant payloads to orbit that will be required for missions to the moon.
While there are rumors on Capitol Hill that Ares may be on the budgetary chopping block this year, that certainly hasn’t been reflected in the current fiscal 2009 NASA funding and authorization measures, according to Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program manager.
“They’ve been wonderfully supportive of Constellation and NASA’s [desire] to move forward with the exploration program,” Hanley said.
Obama soon will send Congress his budget plans for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010.
If the decision to develop Ares I with its team of contractors is dropped in favor of using EELVs from ULA, including Atlas Vs, that wouldn’t be the first time that a procurement decision excluding Lockheed later was altered to include the largest defense contractor on the planet.
For example, in 2002, the Navy selected Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC] and Raytheon Co. [RTN] to develop a prototype of a cutting edge, futuristic destroyer, rejecting a competing bid for the $2.9 billion contract from General Dynamics Corp. [GD] and Lockheed.
But Lockheed subsequently finished developing S-Band radar, and a senior Lockheed official said he hoped the Navy would use it on the new destroyer.
Later still, Lockheed and General Dynamics were included in the destroyer development program as part of a National Team with Northrop and Raytheon.
In missile defense, Lockheed has benefited in recent years as some Democratic lawmakers have attempted to shift money from already existing Boeing-led programs such as the Airborne Laser to the Lockheed-led Aegis sea-based weapon control system (which also involves the Raytheon Standard Missile).