The Orlando Sentinel February 19, 2003
NASA views space plane as helpmate to shuttles
By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Sentinel Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- NASA announced a handful of new details Tuesday about the proposed orbital space plane, which is supposed to provide a safer, more flexible option for sending humans into space within the next decade.
The baseline requirements for the spacecraft call for a vehicle that can be an emergency escape pod for the international space station by 2010 and a simple way to get people back and forth to space two years later.
NASA chief Sean O'Keefe, who proposed the space plane in November as a way to take some of the pressure off the aging space shuttle fleet, has said his goal is to build a simple craft that will be more maneuverable in orbit and easier to launch. But he and others have stressed that the space plane will not be a substitute for the shuttle, which will continue to be the only U.S. vehicle with the ability to haul heavy cargo loads into space.
Frederick Gregory, NASA's deputy administrator, said in a statement Tuesday that the space plane will "significantly complement" the remaining three orbiters in the shuttle fleet, grounded indefinitely in the wake of the Feb. 1 loss of Columbia.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration envisions a vehicle -- or two that are variations of each other -- with at least four seats that will launch into space, at least at first, atop an expendable booster rocket. The requirements call for a craft that's safer than the Russian Soyuz craft that now serves as the station's lifeboat as well as the shuttle.
The agency also wants a craft that can be launched more quickly -- the shuttle requires several weeks of painstaking preparation -- and move around in space more easily than the shuttle.
The requirements do not address whether the craft will be reusable, like the shuttle, or expendable in the way the space program's early vehicles were. They also do not offer any specifics about the design, although Dennis Smith, who manages the space-plane program at Alabama's Marshall Space Flight Center, said last week that a number of options are being considered, both with and without wings.
NASA wants to be able to use the space plane through at least 2020, and probably longer. The agency expects the shuttles to fly until roughly the same time, because a completely new spacecraft with a significant leap in technology is not expected to fly until about 2015.
Since the Columbia disaster, agency watchers and members of Congress have asked whether the schedule for the space plane can be accelerated, to reduce dependence on the shuttle as soon as possible. But Smith does not expect to be able to significantly move up the timetable for the craft.
Space policy expert John Pike said he's not sure why NASA can't build the space plane more quickly, considering that it will be based on technology the agency has been working on for more than a decade.
In fact, O'Keefe's decision to go with the space plane -- while continuing to spend money on developing a so-called "next generation" vehicle -- sprung from a desire to streamline NASA's previous efforts to build a shuttle replacement. During the past several years, a number of possibilities have been proposed, then rejected because of design, engineering or budget problems.
"I would've really thought that after all of the work that has been done on this program over the past decade, that they would be much further along in terms of defining requirements and much closer to cutting metal," said Pike, director of Virginia-based GlobalSecurity.org, a research group.
Pike added that the time it will take to build the craft may mean the sense of urgency for a new vehicle will wane.
"My concern is that by imposing an unnecessarily extended development schedule on this thing, that they are making a return to flight status of the existing shuttle fleet inevitable rather than simply one option," he said. "And I'm also concerned that once they get the shuttle flying again, the already protracted development schedule for space plane will be further delayed."
Gwyneth K. Shaw can be reached at gshaw@orlandosentinel.com or 202-824-8229.
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