NASA Chief Warns of Gap in US Spaceflight Program

The U.S. human spaceflight program is "strained to the limit," NASA's chief said on Thursday, warning against any long gap between the end of the shuttle era and the first flight of a planned new spaceship.

"The United States risks both a real and a perceived loss of leadership on the world stage if we are unable to launch our own astronauts into space for an extended period of time when other nations possess their own capabilities to do so," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a congressional committee.

Griffin acknowledged that NASA already expects a gap between the shuttle's planned retirement in 2010 and the start-up of a new crew exploration vehicle in 2013 or 2014.

"Our human spaceflight program is not an optional program," Griffin told members of the House of Representatives Science Committee. "We are already strained to the limit."

Griffin fielded pointed but largely sympathetic questions about the Bush administration's $16.8 billion budget request for NASA for fiscal 2007.

"I am extremely uneasy about this budget," Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (news, bio, voting record), a New York Republican who chairs the committee, told Griffin. "This budget is bad for space science, worse for Earth science and possibly worse for aeronautics."

A large slice of the U.S. space agency's resources are focused on achieving President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2020 and eventually send humans to Mars.

But before that can happen, NASA must satisfy its commitments to finish building the orbiting International Space Station by 2010, and that cannot occur without a working space shuttle fleet.

The shuttles have been grounded -- except for one shakedown flight last year -- since the fatal February 1, 2003, break-up of Columbia. The next shuttle flight, considered a test of safety improvements, is tentatively set for May.

The U.S. mission to send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972 will not occur until 2018, Griffin said, barring any unforeseen program delays. He warned that any further slips in this schedule would risk a loss of critical expertise at NASA.

If there is an extended hiatus between the end of the shuttle program and the start-up of the crew exploration vehicle, Griffin said the space agency could permanently lose its key staff.

"Then when we choose to resume human spaceflight at a later date, we will have to retrain this cadre of people, create new subcontractors," he said. "We will resume our progress in a very stumbling and halting way."

"If we were sitting here today with the capabilities that this nation had purchased as of the end of the Apollo program, we could go to Mars within a decade," Griffin said. "We have decades worth of hard work in front of us just to be able to get back to where we were. And then Mars will be the decade after that."

My point for bashing the shuttle is that SO MUCH was invested in making the most complex machine the world has ever seen to go THREE HUNDRED miles into space. THREE HUNDRED MILES!!!!

Sorry, but you've just revealed your ignorance. The Shuttle flies that high because that's the mission it was designed to fly. Go do some research on selection of orbits for space missions to get a better understanding of the rationale.

Moreover, the distance from Earth has nothing to do with the complexity of the Shuttle. The requirement to return, land like an airplane, and be launched again is the driver for the Shuttle's complexity.

Ever work a manned mission? The flight rules fill books upon books.

Yes, and yes they do. And the beauty of flight rules is that you seldom have to make things up on the fly.

Gene Kranz is the fellow who drove that train, btw -- I'll never forget his "intro to new flight controllers" pitch where he described the rather hair-raising adventures that made him such a firm believer.

And you are showing your poor attempt as being superior.

The point is that the missions were flawed to begin with. Does the ability to land like a plane REALLY help our space program? It's overly complex for no true benefit. Compare that to something like, I don't know, giving us a system that can get us to a lagrange point? You know, the thing that MUST be done to truely advance Human space flight?

The point you are missing is that the distance from Earth has EVERYTHING to do with continuing the advancement of human space flight.

And you are showing your poor attempt as being superior.

I'm sure you meant to type "at being superior." ;-)

The point is that the missions were flawed to begin with. Does the ability to land like a plane REALLY help our space program? It's overly complex for no true benefit.

You've now changed your argument -- which is good, because your last attempt was technically ignorant.

And this one is, too, come to think of it. I'm sure that with a bit of thought you can begin to see that the ability to land like a plane -- and the reusability that such a capability provides -- does have some rather significant potential benefits, even if those benefits were not realized by the Shuttle.

Compare that to something like, I don't know, giving us a system that can get us to a lagrange point? You know, the thing that MUST be done to truely advance Human space flight?

Hmmmm. The technical aspects of going to a Lagrange point aren't particularly challenging -- vehicles have already been sent to various Lagrange points around the solar system already. The main issues with human space flight have to do with the effects of long-term stays, and various systems to sustain life for long periods. For those sorts of studies, it's far cheaper and easier to send people to the ISS than to send them to a Lagrange point.

The point you are missing is that the distance from Earth has EVERYTHING to do with continuing the advancement of human space flight.

Not yet, it doesn't.

Sorry, I stopped reading at this point.

Sure you did....

Enjoy your superiority complex.

You spoiled it by making it too easy.... :-(

Bye now.

Buh bye.

I concur with the majority of your response. However, I disagree with the following:

You labor under the misperception that the current crop of engineers and scientists are stupid

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I think that NASA has developed a corporate culture that doesn't function efficiently, anymore. Rutan, right or wrong, smoke 'n mirrors notwithstanding, brings some fresh ideas and innovation to the process that could spark a true re-birth of the space program. I well understand the costs involved in mounting a space program the nature of what we have, but I think that some fresh blood might bring some new ideas and new cost containment measures. I'm not recommending a simplistic approach, just suggesting that NASA needs to investigate some alternative methods of conducting its missions.

I'll grant that Rutan builds some interesting stuff, but I quite simply do not trust him.

As I see it, there are three problems with space.

First, the present management and methods of "Big Space" are wretchedly bad. There's a very serious lack of competent management and systems engineering. On the other hand, Rutan would face serious difficulties in this realm because he's not set up to handle the sort of huge project that a real manned space system entails. Airplanes -- even his SS1 -- are easy by comparison. I think this, more than anything else, is the primary problem that must be solved and I honestly don't know how one would go about doing so.

Second, Rutan, et al. cannot get us there commercially, because there is no money to be made from it right now. All of the "space mining" ideas and such only make sense if you've already got a bunch of infrastructure already in place, and private industry is not going to put it there -- the horizon for a decent return on investment for infrastructure would be measured in decades, if ever.

And so you need to bring the government into the act. The problem with government "manned space" is that it's not sexy, and will be brutally expensive no matter how efficiently you can shove hardware out the door. It would require a significant and very long-term commitment by Congress ... a rather forlorn hope at this point.

All good points and, again, I concur witht he bulk of them. Rutan probably doesn't have the experience to run the NASA, I only bring him up because he's one of the most prominent of the commercial space travel aspirants.

The costs of space travel are extraordinarily high, we both agree with that. NASA has become a bloated agency that supports bloated supppliers like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. All those bloated organizations add up to bloated budgets.

I also think that the NASA corporate culture is so imbued in process and redundancy that it probably adds 6 months to a year to every launch schedule. The political infrstructure in NASA also probably stifles innovation from the "worker-bees". It doesn't really seem to matter who runs NASA, there seems to be a lot of turf protection and Not-Invented-Here syndrome among the upper mengement of the agency.

It appears to me that the upper echelons of NASA have become somewhat cloistered and isolated from what goes on in Operations. Until those changes are made, I think the NASA will continue to stumble along in an uninspired fashion.

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