Orlando Sentinel April 12, 2001
SHUTTLE TURNS 20, NASA SEEKS AN UPGRADE
Michael CabbageSentinel Space Editor
CAPE CANAVERAL -- Two decades is an eternity for a well-maintained car, much less a space plane that hurtles to orbit at more than 17,000 mph.
Yet NASA's venerable shuttle fleet is still going strong. Twenty years ago today, astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen blasted off on shuttle Columbia's maiden flight. And despite investing more than $1 billion since 1996 to find a successor, NASA and its industry partners are no closer to putting the expensive, aging launcher out to pasture.
NASA's plan is to develop a reusable spaceship by 2012 that radically reduces cost and risk. Many of the shuttle's staunchest supporters concede the present launcher, or even an upgraded version, can't possibly meet those ambitious goals.
Until they find a ship that can, the shuttle will remain the only option.
"My gut feeling is that it's going to be very difficult -- if not impossible -- to have an evolved shuttle meet these goals," said Art Stephenson, director of Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA's lead center for rocket development. "We're very focused on new architectures we believe can make the goals."
Rocketry's scrap heap already is littered with several new architectures that never panned out. NASA's $50 million Clipper Graham test ship crashed and burned in 1996. Engineering and money issues ended work on the $1.3 billion X-33 and the $200 million X-34 experimental ships in March. Other small, commercial projects were abandoned for similar reasons.
Now, NASA is pinning its hopes on a $4.5 billion program designed to develop new technologies for its second-generation spacecraft. If the program succeeds, a replacement ship could be a decade away.
But history suggests that's a big if.
Current plans call for the shuttle fleet's four orbiters to continue flying through at least 2013 to support the international space station.
Rosier projections by shuttle supporters put the fleet's eventual life expectancy at close to 50 years. That's about the same amount of time it took America to progress from horseback to moon rockets.
"It's not the same shuttle that John and I flew," said Crippen, Columbia's co-pilot for the first launch. "That vehicle is capable of flying another 20-plus years, and I personally believe that it will."
The shuttle forever?
The shuttle -- the world's first reusable manned spacecraft -- remains an amazing machine. Its capabilities in orbit are unmatched, even by most rockets on the drawing board. More than $2 billion has been spent upgrading its 1970s-era technology to sophisticated new systems. It has launched safely 102 times out of 103 tries.
So why the push to retire the shuttle? Despite all of its capabilities, the spaceship has two fundamental flaws.
The chance of a catastrophic failure during launch, estimated at one in 438, remains too high.
Because the shuttle never reached its projected flight rate of two dozen missions per year, each launch costs more than $400 million. Almost 4,000 contract workers are needed at Kennedy Space Center alone to maintain and prepare the space planes for flight.
To address those shortcomings, President Clinton directed NASA in 1996 to come up with alternatives for a successor vehicle by the end of the decade. There were two main goals: Create a ship more than 100 times safer. Slash the cost of carrying cargo to orbit from $10,000 per pound aboard the shuttle to $1,000 per pound.
Most experts agree the current shuttle can't get there, even with extensive modifications. So in recent months, shuttle backers adopted a new strategy to replace the launcher with an updated, state-of-the-art model.
NASA managers have been careful not to publicly rule out an evolved shuttle. However, that concept appears to have dropped from front-runner to long shot since the Bush administration's arrival in Washington.
"We are seriously looking at an alternative to the shuttle . . . to get to those goals," Stephenson said.
New technologies
NASA's latest plan to nurture a shuttle replacement centers on the agency's Space Launch Initiative. The program -- a five-year, $4.5 billion effort if fully funded by Congress and the White House -- initially is aimed at pioneering breakthroughs in rocket science.
"We're open to any idea that will meet the goals of the program, which is to substantially improve reliability and lower costs," said Dennis Smith, deputy director of Marshall Space Flight Center's Space Transportation Office.
The objective is simple: a reusable launcher able to carry satellites to orbit, as well as deliver people and cargo to the international space station. The next two years will focus on basic systems-level engineering and technical risk reduction in areas such as propulsion. The initiative won't fund larger experimental prototypes such as the X-33 vehicle, at least not right away.
NASA plans to start narrowing the field about 2003. The most promising designs will be tested over a five- or six-year period starting in 2005 or 2006. NASA is hoping for at least two alternatives to foster competition. The goal is to have at least one new spaceship in operation by 2012. There would be a phase-in period as it gradually takes over the shuttle's duties.
Contracts already are being negotiated with companies that submitted winning bids for technology work on a variety of vehicle concepts. The winners won't be made public until mid-May. However, a source familiar with the selection process said a proposal submitted by shuttle prime contractor United Space Alliance to work on an upgraded shuttle was rejected.
NASA officials declined to comment on specific proposals until negotiations are complete. However, they made it clear shuttle-based designs face an uphill battle.
"The Space Launch Initiative is definitely not a shuttle upgrades program," Stephenson said. "And we're not laying requirements on the Space Launch Initiative that say 'You have to be able to upgrade the shuttle with this technology.' "
NASA administrator Dan Goldin was more blunt.
"We will not have the people who work on the shuttle drive those funds to a shuttle solution only," he said. "This is going to be wide-open research."
Who pays?
For now, the shuttle remains the only manned U.S. spaceship. Efforts to replace it are a long way from the launch pad. And money, not engineering, has proved the biggest obstacle.
NASA's dream is a fleet of privately owned and operated spacecraft on which the agency can buy rides. Industry appeared willing to bankroll new rockets when projections of future commercial satellite launches skyrocketed in the mid-1990s. Those projections, however, never were realized after several satellite communication ventures went broke. Now, aerospace companies are reluctant to spend their money on new launchers to compete for dwindling business.
Most estimates put the cost of a new spacecraft at $7 billion or more. Despite lots of congressional rhetoric about the resourcefulness of the free market, the fact remains no major U.S. launch system ever has been built without huge government investment. Government launches are expected to roughly equal the number of commercial missions over the near-term. So NASA managers have accepted the likelihood the agency will have to share the costs of a new spaceship.
"If the market was selecting winners and losers, there would be no winners," Smith said.
Will the Space Launch Initiative succeed where other efforts have failed? Time will tell. But experts warn never to bet against the shuttle.
"We have it, and it works," said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org policy-research organization. "The past decade has shown that developing a replacement for the shuttle is a good way to spend a billion dollars without getting anything to show for it. But hope springs eternal."
Michael Cabbage can be reached at mcabbage@orlandosentinel.com or 321-639-0522.
Copyright © 2001, Orlando Sentinel
