The Huntsville Times May 11, 2009
While NASA awaits review, critics eye rocket options
By Shelby G. Spires
With no NASA administrator, a lack of signal from a new president about the importance of human spaceflight, rocket programs under review and a relatively flat space agency budget, space experts are scratching their heads wondering what the future will hold for America's space program.
Congress is moving to extend the space shuttle program - originally set for retirement in 2010 - and the White House has put the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares rocket program, along with the rest of human spaceflight, under review until August.
To John Pike, space and defense expert with GlobalSecurity.org, the delays and reviews seem to be standard practice for the past three decades.
"Here we are four decades after Mercury and NASA cannot develop a new rocket? That's just ludicrous. Nobody can come up with a capsule to put onto a Delta rocket and send it to the space station?" Pike asked.
"It seems like we keep seeing drawings and cartoons that get better every year, but I'm tired of artwork. We don't have a space program. What we have is an expensive art program."
The delays have pitted two of Huntsville's rocket programs against each other. "It sort of looks like the shuttle camp is squaring off against the Ares camp, but I think the bigger question to ask is what does NASA need?" Pike said. "That's what this upcoming review is supposed to answer. I don't know if it will or not."
The reality is that both shuttle and Ares are moving along, NASA managers say.
The shuttle continues to fly, with a planned launch to the Hubble Space Telescope set for 1:01 p.m. CDT today. Ares I has hardware flowing down to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"We are going forward and we have real, tangible hardware. It's not just drawings any longer," said Robert Lightfoot, acting Marshall director. "We have a test launch planned no earlier than Aug. 30. We are going forward."
Lightfoot told reporters last week that the shuttle and Ares budget was good for another year, but made no promises about any program after that, indicating the review panel headed by space veteran Norm Augustine would chart that course.
Through the budget process and general inaction, the White House and Congress have extended the shuttle program out about another year. It was originally planned to retire by the end of 2010, and if all flights happen on time and nothing else falls behind schedule it should.
That's a perfect world scenario, said Jim Muncy, co-founder of the Virginia-based Space Heritage Foundation.
"It's just not going to happen that way. In order for the shuttle to complete its manifest - which NASA has hardware for - it will have to fly six flights over a year's time," Muncy said. "They will take their time and be careful, probably extra careful leading up to the closing flights. Schedules will slip."
Muncy and Pike agreed the shuttle should be retired because it is old, expensive and could cause an accident.
There could be a third option that is not being adequately considered, the experts said. NASA should look at commercial options, chiefly United Launch Alliance rockets made in Decatur.
"We've made an investment in the Delta and Atlas rockets," Pike said. "Why not use them? Why go out and reinvent the rocket? It makes no sense."
NASA managers did consider the expendable launch vehicles during trade studies in 2005. Those were rejected because they would not meet safety and cost requirements given the overall scope of the Ares mission, which is to take crews to the International Space Station and possibly to the moon.
Muncy said the Ares I, the crew vehicle lifter, should be scrapped "and development should proceed right now on the Earth Departure Stage, that's the upper stage of the Ares V, along with the rest of Ares V. That's what is going to get you out of low Earth orbit and on to the moon, Mars or a nearby asteroid. The Ares I will not. This nation has rockets right down the road from Huntsville that can do that job, and (North Alabama) has the people with skills willing to work on those."
© Copyright 2009, The Huntsville Times
