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| House Panel Resists Changes in NASA Space Program (501268) | |||
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House Panel Resists Changes in NASA Space Program |
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Posted by WillD on Tue Sep 22 21:57:06 2009 The Augustine Committee presented a summary of its findings to the House committee on Seince and Technology, and the results do not seem to be particularly good. I suppose it is good that neither committee is seriously proposing we eliminate our manned flight capability, and indeed both appear to prefer a plan which results in us landing on the Moon or Mars. They just appear to have come to two different conclusions as to how to get there. While not explicitly stated in the summary the Augustine committee appears to heavily favor commercial launch services over NASA's own launch capability. The Congressional committee members are still in favor of the Constellation program developed under the Bush Administration.House Panel Resists Changes in NASA Space Program By KENNETH CHANG Published: September 15, 2009 WASHINGTON — Members of a key House committee said Tuesday that they were reluctant to change NASA’s current plans for human spaceflight after the space shuttles are retired from service, beyond giving more money to the agency. “I think that good public policy argues for setting the bar pretty high against making significant changes in direction at this point,” said Representative Bart Gordon, Democrat of Tennessee, who is chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology. “There would need to be a compelling reason to scrap what we’ve invested our time and money in over these past four years.” Mr. Gordon’s remarks came during the first Congressional hearing on a new report that offers options for the future of astronauts in space. NASA is developing a new series of rockets to replace the space shuttles, which are scheduled to be retired next year. The Obama administration has not offered public support for the rockets, which are part of the agency’s Constellation program, and in May convened a panel to review the program. Norman Augustine, a former chief executive of Lockheed Martin who led the 10-member review panel, encountered a sometimes testy atmosphere in his appearance before the committee on Tuesday. “I am pretty angry,” said Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, who heads the committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. Ms. Giffords said she had been hoping for a detailed evaluation of Constellation and recommendations for how to improve it. Instead, she said, the panel had provided a menu of potential replacements for the program. “We have a glancing attention to Constellation, even mentioning it in past tense,” she said. But Mr. Augustine said the panel had done what had been requested — provide a list of options, not a preferred recommendation — and noted that the Constellation program was one of the five options offered. “We believe the existing program is a fine program,” he said. The panel issued a 12-page summary last week, and Mr. Augustine said it would try to complete the report this month. Committee members agreed with Mr. Augustine on a central conclusion of the panel: NASA needs about $3 billion more a year — increasing the spending over the next decade on human spaceflight to $130 billion from $100 billion — or it will not be able to accomplish the goals of Constellation or any alternative program. Without an increase, Mr. Augustine said, NASA could continue to operate the International Space Station and develop some new technology, but it would not get out of Earth orbit for the foreseeable future. “It will be a program that will inspire very few people,” he said. A smaller increase of $1.5 billion a year was also insufficient, the panel concluded. In addition, it said that none of the options appreciably shortens the gap between the retirement of the shuttles — when the United States will rely on Russia for transportation to and from the International Space Station — and the development of the Ares I. The Ares, the first of the Constellation rockets, will not be ready for use until at least 2015, and the panel predicted that the schedule would slip to 2017. Mr. Augustine, who spent two hours before the House committee, will be questioned by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday. Also testifying to the House committee on Tuesday were Michael D. Griffin, the former NASA administrator who stepped down in January with the change in administrations, and Joseph W. Dyer, a retired vice admiral who is chairman of the aerospace advisory panel at NASA. Dr. Griffin agreed that the fundamental issue is money, pointing out that NASA’s budget was cut 20 percent in 1994. In inflation-adjusted dollars, NASA’s budget is lower than it was in 1993. “I think we’re here today because we don’t like how that experiment turned out,” he said. To cancel Ares I and rely on commercial companies to provide transportation to orbit, a suggestion made by the review panel, would be “risky in the extreme,” Dr. Griffin said. “That day is not yet and is not soon.” Dr. Griffin also said that NASA had been much more careful in preparing its cost estimates for Constellation and that the review panel had not taken that into account. Mr. Dyer said that the safety panel did not support extending operations of the space shuttle, another of the options offered by the review panel. He also said that NASA had not held detailed conversations with commercial companies about what would be necessary to make their rockets sufficiently safe for passengers.It is interesting, the Augustine committee clearly has no interest in pursuing the Ares I. The Obama administration appears to favor commercial manned spaceflight, be it with United Launch Alliance's Delta IVH and Atlas V, SpaceX's Falcon 9, or perhaps Orbital Science Corporation's Taurus II booster. However, it seems unlikely the politicians from areas rooted in the shuttle program will give up without a fight. ULA's EELV-based moonshot program is dependent upon a large number of Earth Orbit Rendezvous moves, which potentially introduces a good deal of risk. If we're just going to the ISS for the next 20 years then the EELV and Falcon 9 might be the way to go. However, if we want to go anywhere else we're going to need a heavy lift booster. We currently have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the existing shuttle infrastructure to provide the sort of heavy lift capability we lost when the Saturn INT-21 put Skylab in orbit. The Ares I is a non-starter, a potential disaster waiting to happen. The Ares V will require nearly 15 years to develop the larger tank, the three new engines, and everything else. At that point they may as well develop a completely new fully liquid rocket rather than try to pretend any part of the Ares family is shuttle derived. NASA will not accept crews riding next to the external tank, not after the problems they had with Challenger and Columbia because of that position. But if we stick with the 4 segment SRBs, the space shuttle main engines, the same tank size as the current ET, and we stick the payload on the top then we have a politically acceptable heavy lifter at a fraction of the cost of the Ares V without scrapping most of the Shuttle hardware. Incidentally this is the Direct team's Jupiter proposal, which can eventually take advantage of all the technologies now being developed for the Ares I and Ares V, but is modular and thus can be flown earlier with a slight reduction in performance. For however wrong Griffin was when he was Dubya's hatchetman I think he's a bit on point here. The Commercial Orbital Transportation - D contracts with SpaceX and OSC are for crew launches in their own capsules on their own boosters. Neither has expressed an interest in launching NASA's Orion capsule. The Atlas V or Delta IVH EELVs can in theory orbit an Orion capsule, but its trajectory is less forgiving of an abort than the Ares I, Jupiter 130, or Falcon 9H. Thus it is a mistake for NASA to rely too heavily on the commercial sector to fill the gap in spaceflight between the Shuttle and the "Ares V Lite" concept that is emerging to replace the Ares I as the crewed launch vehicle for the Constellation program. Shaving a few more tons off the Ares V Lite would yield the Jupiter 130, which can provide launches within months of the Shuttle's last flight, and which can be grown into a heavy lifter in the same class as the early Ares V proposals. |
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