Debate on Bush space plan has been loaded with falsehoods

The announcement of the new national space exploration plan has been accompanied by some sloppy journalism and even sloppier editorializing. It has been common for various critics of the plan to establish unrealistic strawman arguments that they then demolish in order to try and discredit the plan rather than to debate its merits or shortcomings.

Alex Roland: Bush's space plan a political hoax

NASA's Project Prometheus Gets New Agenda, Changes***Now, with an ambitious new space exploration agenda handed down by the White House, NASA is making more changes to Project Prometheus.

JIMO's launch date is slipping and responsibility for developing the nuclear systems NASA says it needs to kick solar system exploration into high gear is being given to the newly established Exploration Systems Enterprise. The new enterprise will be headed by retired U.S. Navy Adm. Craig Steidle, a veteran of the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter program.

The move takes the bulk of Project Prometheus and its funding -- expected to top $438 million in 2005 - away from NASA's Space Science Enterprise.

Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science, said his organization remains in charge of setting the science guidelines for the JIMO mission and will continue to oversee the development of the radioisotope power generators -- essentially plutonium-powered batteries -- the agency needs for a long-lasting science rover it is launching to Mars in 2009.

The rest of Project Prometheus, including the design and development of the JIMO spacecraft and its nuclear propulsion system, is moving to Steidle's organization, literally just down the hall from Weiler's office at NASA headquarters here.

But the move is more than just a change of location for the program. It also marks a change in the way that NASA has historically gone about developing spacecraft and other major systems. Now, instead of one organization setting the science requirements and developing the spacecraft -- a process that usually entails a spirited tug of war between what scientists want to do and what engineers think can be done -- the two pieces will be split between two organizations.***

Harry Vanderbilt of Space Access Society*** The New White House NASA Policy: Initial Impressions - It's early days yet, but we have reached a few conclusions about this new government space exploration policy. One important thing to keep in mind here: A November win stipulated, this White House still has only five years to accomplish its goals. Come January 2009 it's someone else's turn. We won't get back to the Moon in five years, let alone on to Mars - the real question is, at the end of five years, will NASA be changed enough to begin heading on out there halfway affordably?

After spending way too much time the last few weeks reading the tea leaves, our answer is, yes, it could happen. There are no sure things in politics, but the approach this Administration seems to be taking is vastly better than every previous major NASA initiative of the last twenty years, in that it's at least not obviously doomed from the start by trusting NASA as-is to do the job. Major NASA restructuring seems to be in the wind, albeit soft-peddled thus far in this election year.

Which reminds us - we think this new plan is very unlikely to be what many are claiming, mere election-year feelgood puffery. Were it so, the Administration would be making promises left and right, jobs for everyone and a contract in every district, and not worrying overmuch whether the Congress would fund it all once the election's over. Instead, the White House and NASA HQ have been notably reticent about reassuring the established NASA manned space Centers and contractors that they'll all have major roles in the new initiative. Refusing to promise job security is a poor way to win votes. It is, however, a good way to keep options open to implement the sort of major restructuring NASA will need to meet the new program's ambitious goals within relatively modest budget increases.

Those things said, we think the core of this exercise will be the irreversible retirement of Shuttle in favor of EELV for NASA- operated manned space missions past the end of this decade. Transportation-centric of us, yes, we know... But consider:

- Shuttle's fragility, slow turnaround, and manpower-intensive high cost are at the core of NASA's long-time manned-space paralysis.

- EELV, the new Delta 4 and Atlas 5 families of expendable boosters, was designed specifically to solve similar DOD problems with Titan 4, increasing reliability somewhat and greatly reducing turnaround time and manpower costs. The EELV program seems to be more or less succeeding at these goals, on the evidence to date.

- DOD however is faced with paying more for the EELVs they buy, due to a dearth of commercial sales reducing the production runs below planned levels. Switching NASA to EELV not only would save NASA about three billion a year on a raw pounds-to-orbit basis (presumably less once new specialized NASA vehicle costs are factored in) but would also reduce DOD space launch costs by increasing EELV production runs.

- If the prospect of this policy double-win isn't enough to convince you that EELV is in NASA's future, keep in mind that the head of the new NASA transformation advisory commission is Pete Aldridge, AKA "The Father of the EELV", and the only other space- launch specialist on the commission was also heavily involved in DOD's move to EELV.

Many at NASA and elsewhere seem to think that the new deep-space Crewed Exploration Vehicle, CEV, might yet fly on some sort of new heavy-lift launcher using Shuttle components. We find that highly unlikely. Shuttle is massively labor-intensive by design; keeping Shuttle components in production and using Shuttle operating organizations would mean keeping significant slices of current Shuttle payrolls. This money has to be freed up for Moon-Mars or the plan won't work. Developing a new Shuttle-derived launcher would also eat Moon-Mars money. We don't think it's going to happen.

What we expect will happen before January 2009 is:

- To prevent any future return to the Shuttle status quo, as much of the production and support structure as possible will be shut down and dispersed. Enough hardware for remaining scheduled flights will be stockpiled, but we predict the workforces will be scattered and the factories will be scrapped.

- NASA is going to start learning to routinely assemble deep-space missions on-orbit. The largest current EELV variants put about 25 tons into low earth orbit, too small for practical Lunar trips, let alone Mars and other deep-space voyages. These may also require some increased surge-launch capacity for EELV, additional pads and fast-turnaround booster/payload processing facilities.

- CEV, "Crewed Exploration Vehicle", will be highly modular to cover a range of missions, and its development will be an absolute top priority - if CEV development fails, NASA manned space has no sure future, post-Shuttle.

One hopeful sign: Not only is the manager for CEV development an outsider to NASA business-as-usual (he's a Navy admiral who's run a couple of succesful jet fighter developments) but he's also working out of NASA HQ in DC rather than out of MSFC - none of the established NASA manned-space field centers is being promised any leading role in CEV development thus far.

Another positive sign: NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe in Senate testimony recently spoke of seeking foreign (IE Soyuz) *and* commercial sources for Station support post-Shuttle. It's probably just as well the Alternate Access To Station program has been shut down; after years as a lip-service sham the program would have had a hard time getting real. But there's an obvious opening for something like Alt Access now - US commercial Station-service vehicles are no longer a threat to Shuttle; Shuttle's gone anyway. What they are now is a defense against a post-Shuttle Soyuz monopoly on Station access - likely to be seen in NASA now as a good thing.

In this vein, NASA has signed a $200m+ contract with Kistler, ostensibly for flight test data, about a quarter of it payable before first flight, the rest on delivery of flight test data. This should give Kistler a real chance of getting out of Chapter 11 and on to first flight of their 75% completed two-stage reusable medium- lift launcher. This move seems to indicate a considerably improved NASA attitude toward using genuine commercial space transportation for routine service missions. We await with interest further manifestations.

Finally for now, NASA has officially embraced prizes! There's $20 million in the coming year's budget proposal to fund incentive prizes, details as yet unknown. It's a start.

Mind, any number of things could prevent this plan succeeding. Congress could balk at the depth of the restructuring we expect will get underway, post-election. The current Administration could lose next fall's election and leave office in a year. NASA could screw up what we think will be its final chance to replace Shuttle, CEV development, and end up completely dependent on new commercial manned space capabilities. Actually, this last strikes us as as not entirely a bad thing... It's going to be interesting to watch this process - the next year should begin to show clearly how close our educated guesses are. ***

Moon to Mars Web Site: President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond

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