MarsBlog.net

Frank Sietzen looks into his crystal ball and divines the Administration’s new long-term focus for NASA.

O’Keefe “worked to build a consensus” for renewed U.S. manned spaceflight beyond shuttle and station. The return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade became “by default” the least expensive and risky of the paths proposed for the U.S. space program.

Bush will call for renewed U.S. activities leading to leadership of space exploration “in the Earth-Moon system” that could include manned lunar landings, the employment of a series of commercially-available launch vehicles and upper stages, new robotic lunar probes that will include orbiting communications and navigation relay satellites, and the development of a “flexible” manned spacecraft that is likely to be a form of the proposed Orbital Space Plane, but no new advanced launchers, large Apollo-style space vehicles or reusable replacements for the shuttles. Creation of a manned lunar base would evolve from more limited landings, if at all.

Development of new, advanced space technologies that would reinvigorate the space program and industry has been more of a focus of the effort than the use of the Moon itself, the source said. Military use of space and military test beds were also key elements in gaining acceptance of the renewed space plan. Testing of the Prometheus atomic rocket would also be a part of the plan.

The existing space shuttle fleet will play a crucial role in the plan by use of its heavy lifting capabilities in an unmanned form. Use of the existing U.S. expendable Delta and Atlas fleet as well as the remaining three shuttles was mandated early on, the source indicated. Part of this exercise has also been a parallel effort to arrive at a retirement date for the shuttle. That had yet to be agreed upon, this column has been told.

While Atlas V (and Delta IV) are nominally private launch vehicles, one has to wonder how much, if any, of this activity will involve private/commercial players — or whether this “new vision” will be just for NASA and DoD. It is interesting to note, however, that DoD is expected to have greater involvement with NASA in this predicted future. The military (to my eye) takes a longer view of technology and capability development than does NASA, patiently developing new weapons, communications, surveillance and other advanced systems over many years, and incrementally improving the capabilities of the systems it already has.

Curiously, Sietzen’s article mentions that there are no plans for new advanced launchers or large space vehicles, yet describes the Shuttles being used in unmanned form. Oh please please please tell me that the “pilotless Shuttle” concept is not seriously being considered — if you aren’t sending humans on it, there is no good reason for sending the Orbiter up. The only good reason for using Shuttle elements, unmanned, is to launch large or heavy items beyond the capacity of other lifters — launching unmanned doesn’t gain you all that much in payload mass, and does nothing to change the payload envelope. Taking out the crew cabin to enhance mass capability and maybe add a bit of envelope length would not only be hugely expensive but would permanently remove the affected Orbiter from manned service (not automatically a bad thing, if something else is available, but something to keep in mind) — the expense of the modifications and the ongoing expense of Orbiter maintenance and operations might justify the development of a (non-SSME) Shuttle-C. If, that is, heavy-lift is actually needed for some reason.

The article also indicates that someone has been listening to the calls for a “divestiture” of certain NASA responsibilities. Unfortunately, Sietzen indicates that this idea is politically unpalatable to some, and so is to be pushed off until after the election if not indefinitely/permanently.