Denver Post February 17, 2003
Jeffco firm gears up for space plane
Lockheed, others await NASA's plan Tuesday
By Jennifer Beauprez
Denver Post Business Writer
Monday, February 17, 2003 - After a series of false starts, NASA on Tuesday will reveal detailed instructions for building its orbital space plane, bringing relief to 150 Lockheed Martin engineers in Jefferson County.
Lockheed Martin's space systems division, based in Jefferson County's Waterton Canyon area, is on the short list of contractors bidding on the project to create a smaller spacecraft that would serve as a "lifeboat" for astronauts on the international space station.
Because of a lack of urgency and funding cuts, NASA has yet to build a replacement for the space shuttle fleet. And for several years, it has continued to shift its strategy for reaching that goal.
The orbital space plane has taken on increased importance for NASA after space shuttle Columbia broke up during re-entry Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts on board.
The space plane would be dramatically smaller than the shuttle. It most likely would be launched into orbit by Lockheed's Atlas V rocket or Boeing's Delta V rocket - which should help keep launch costs lower because those same rockets will have other uses, including sending up military satellites.
Other visions of the plane involve dropping it from an in-flight airplane and then firing a rocket engine to take it into space. NASA decided to call it an orbital space plane instead of a shuttle.
Eventually, the space plane would transport crew and cargo to and from space station Alpha.
"In the early 1990s, one of the reasons we thought we could wait was the shuttles were still fairly new," said Dennis Smith, NASA's orbital space plane project manager, of developing a shuttle replacement.
"Now, it's to the point where we need an alternate system. We need multiple ways to fly people to space," Smith said. "We've been asked to see if there's anything we can do faster."
Smith said NASA has no plans to accelerate the schedule, which would put a spacecraft in flight by 2010 and humans on the missions by 2012.
"We're simply moving forward as fast as we can while getting through the grief of what happened," he said, referring to the Columbia disaster.
A three-person Russian Soyuz craft is docked at the international space station for the crew to use in emergencies, but the United States has relied heavily on its shuttles for hauling people and cargo.
Congress has expressed interest in more funding for NASA in general, but it has not yet weighed the issue of more money specifically for a shuttle replacement vehicle.
"There's been a lot of false starts in this," said Paul Nisbet, an aerospace analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I. "Now that they're down to three (shuttles) and you've got a $100 billion space station that would deteriorate unless it was attended to by full-time crew, I think they'll be moving a lot more deliberately."
NASA had planned to give contractors more details on the strategy for the orbital space plane - such as weight, thermal protection and number of crew members, for instance - on Feb. 3, but the Columbia disaster put the announcement on hold until Tuesday.
Meanwhile, engineers at Lockheed, Boeing Corp., Northrup Grumman and a number of other smaller firms await the agency's instructions to continue their work.
The orbital space plane would be about half the size of a space shuttle, which is 184 feet long. And it would be a fraction of a shuttle's weight, which is about 4.5 million pounds - equal to about 378 elephants.
NASA needs to reduce the weight of the spacecraft to cut costs, said John Pike, an aerospace and defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. Right now, it costs $10,000 to put one pound of cargo into orbit. Ultimately, NASA wants to reduce that cost to $100 per pound.
Pike estimated NASA will spend $5 billion to develop the plane and $1 billion a year in operational costs. That compares to the $30 billion spent on the shuttle and $3 billion in the shuttle's annual upkeep.
The orbital space plane project is far less technologically ambitious than Lockheed's initial stab at a replacement for the shuttle in the mid-1990s.
NASA scrapped funding for Lockheed Martin's X-33 space plane in 2001, after the company had problems with its fuel tank. Lockheed Martin worked on the project for five years, with hopes it would evolve into a fleet of full-scale reusable vehicles designed to take off and land, similar to the space shuttle, but without jettisoning spent boosters or fuel tanks.
Some experts called it a high- risk and high-reward project.
"It was a hugely expensive program canceled because Lockheed wanted to do high-end technology and needed $30 billion more to develop it," said Marco Caceres, senior aerospace analyst with the Teal Group, a market research firm in Fairfax, Va.
The same year, Lockheed Martin became a lead developer of new technologies with the space launch initiative program, receiving a $94 million research contract.
In November, however, NASA switched gears again, announcing plans for the less expensive, smaller orbital space plane.
Meanwhile, funding continued for rival Boeing's X-37, a robotic space plane that would use a booster rocket to launch and would land like an airplane on a runway.
"We've already done some glide flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California," said Dan Beck, a Boeing spokesman. "We expect to go on its first orbital flight in 2006. We think it could be the next space plane."
Lockheed Martin executives hope to use the company's expertise gleaned from years of work on its canceled X-33 while it sketches new drawings for the space plane.
Copyright © 2003, The Denver Post
