Rocky Mountain News March 13, 2006
Moon race nears liftoff
Lockheed, Northrop teams in contest for huge spacecraft deal
By Roger Fillion
It's been billed as "Apollo on steroids," a next-generation spacecraft to transport Americans 239,000 miles to the moon - and ultimately Mars.
And the high-stakes contest to develop and build this vehicle for NASA is nearing the home stretch.
The project is the biggest space-related contract up for grabs for the foreseeable future - perhaps reaching an estimated $20 billion.
It would generate hundreds of new jobs for the company that lands the deal - either Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County or a Northrop Grumman-Boeing team.
The "crew exploration vehicle" would be NASA's newest human spacecraft since the shuttle was initially launched in 1981. It would be the first space vehicle to return Americans to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA officials are expected to pick a prime contractor for the CEV job this summer. The winner is likely to garner hefty bragging rights.
"Whoever wins this is going to be known as the major player for putting Americans into space for the next 25 years," said J.P. Stevens, vice president of space systems at the Aerospace Industries Association, an industry trade group in Washington.
As conceived by NASA, the CEV would resemble an oversized, bell- shaped Apollo capsule. It would accommodate four astronauts during a lunar mission and six crew members for flights to the international space station and Mars. The spacecraft also could be configured to ship pressurized cargo.
The new vehicle would be deployed after NASA retires the space shuttle in 2010.
The CEV would be the nation's fifth manned spacecraft since astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to roar into space in 1961 aboard a Mercury spacecraft. That was followed by Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle programs.
Little wonder, then, that the Lockheed and Northrop Grumman-Boeing teams are pulling out the stops.
Lockheed, for example, recently said it would do final assembly and testing on the CEV in Florida, picking up a potentially key political ally in Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Northrop Grumman and Boeing are keeping their plans quiet.
"Steady performer"
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County is overseeing Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed's efforts to win the contest.
"Everyone knows this is the biggie, and they're fighting tooth and nail for it," Stevens said.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, estimates the award is worth from $10 billion to $20 billion over the life of the contract.
And he reckons the CEV program will run for at least two decades, giving the winner a reliable income stream in the roller-coaster business of aerospace.
"There is a lot of interest in winning that contract because it's going to be a steady performer," said Pike. "You could hang a company on it."
The competing teams are wrapping up their work so they can hand NASA their proposals by next Monday.
NASA officials will then pore over each team's plans, checking technical details. The companies get a second opportunity to submit refined proposals in April. NASA officials will scrutinize the plans further before deciding which is the better deal.
"They're looking for the best value to the government," said Kelly Humphries, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
New high-paying jobs
For Colorado, Lockheed executives say the contract would generate 300 to 500 new jobs in the Denver area. Many of them would be high-paying engineering jobs.
That would be on top of the 150 employees here now who are putting the finishing touches on the voluminous proposal Lockheed executives will give NASA.
The 150 currently on the job include engineers, technical writers, procurement and contract experts, finance gurus and program-management specialists.
They're camped out at Lockheed's Southpark facilities in Arapahoe County and the Waterton Canyon campus in Jefferson County.
About 300 Lockheed employees have been working on the company's pitch. Aside from metro Denver, they're also at facilities in Michoud, La., Houston, and Florida's Cape Canaveral.
John Karas, vice president of space exploration for Lockheed Martin, expects to deliver the NASA proposal on Friday, three days early.
"Right now, things are pretty good," Karas said.
Lockheed's own proposal will total 11,000 pages. Another 7,000 pages will be submitted on behalf of Lockheed's subcontractors, bringing Lockheed's overall proposal to a whopping 18,000 pages.
Lockheed employees have put in 12-to-14-hour days. Among other things, they've crafted large models to simulate the CEV docking with the international space station. That would be among the spacecraft's first official tasks.
"These things are the size of a car that move around," Karas said of the models.
Company executives are crossing their fingers that Lockheed's history in human space flight will pay dividends when NASA announces a winner.
"We have rocket propellant in our blood," Karas said.
Executives and employees at Northrop Grumman and Boeing are equally determined. The two teamed up in January 2005 and have worked informally on a new spacecraft design since July 2004.
"Because of the similarities in our concepts, we got together to form this team," said Michael Lembeck, director of Northrop Grumman's space operations in Houston.
About 375 people have been working on the duo's proposals at facilities in El Segundo, Calif., Houston and Huntsville, Ala.
They include engineers designing the craft via computer; managers ensuring the proposal is complete and on track; experts estimating the costs of doing something a particular way; and designers readying graphics to back up the multivolume proposal.
Others, still, are honing the nuts-and-bolt strategy of how the whole document will be delivered to NASA's doorstep on time.
While Northrop and Boeing are fierce competitors for other government contracts - jet fighters or modern-day drones called unmanned aerial vehicles, for example - the two are working in sync on the CEV.
"We're in the same building. We wear the same badges," Lembeck said. "It's hard to tell us apart."
The competing teams have been refining and changing their plans for months. Last September, Lockheed Martin engineers were forced back to the drawing board after NASA endorsed the type of next-generation spacecraft championed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
The Jefferson County team had proposed a wedge-shaped vehicle that looked like a wingless space shuttle. But NASA's chief, Michael Griffin, said the agency instead wanted the CEV to look like a blunt-body crew capsule, much like the Apollo but bigger.
NASA's decision to go with a more traditional capsule design - vs. today's space shuttle - boils down to physics and history.
"The science of space flight hasn't changed since we started sending humans into space," noted a NASA document about the CEV program.
"Blunt-body, conical spacecraft simply provide the safest, most economic means of transporting crews to and from space."
Crew-escape capability
Unlike the shuttle, the CEV would have an emergency escape tower. It would allow astronauts to jettison their capsule from the booster rocket carrying them to space if a problem develops.
"This is returning to the proven heritage of the capsules," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "The shuttle was the exception.
Logsdon did call the shuttle "a remarkable technical achievement. But it is very risky and very expensive."
The CEV project comes after President Bush in January 2004 trumpeted his plan to send humans back to the moon aboard a new spacecraft - and ultimately on to Mars.
Under NASA's current flight plan, the CEV would begin to ferry crews and supplies to the international space station starting as soon as possible after the shuttle is retired in 2010 - but no later than 2014.
Humans would roar off to the moon no later than 2018. The CEV would rely on a separate lunar lander to bring astronauts to the moon's surface, just as Apollo did. The moon mission has been described as a "dress rehearsal" for the ultimate Mars mission.
Pike of GlobalSecurity.org noted some irony in the more traditional design for the CEV - vs. the shuttle.
"We spent three decades trying to make a spacecraft look like an aircraft," Pike said of the shuttle. "We finally concluded that they are two different things."
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