Tim Furniss/WASHINGTON DC
DANIEL GOLDIN HAS taken NASA by the scruff of its neck and brought it out of the post-Challenger doldrums into a new international era, with a "faster, better, cheaper" way of doing things. It has been a painful process for some, particularly those whose jobs have been cut and those who worry that the plan to privatise Space Shuttle operations will have an adverse effect on safety. Goldin claims that his revitalisation of NASA "...just had to be done".
There was a "hot" Cold War during the time of the Apollo Moon missions, says Goldin. During the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962, "...the world was almost at war". When the Apollo programme ended, there was a "cold" Cold War and the attitude to space flight changed. Goldin continues: "We still had a drive to build very big, complex and expensive systems because we were still competing with the Soviet Union."
Goldin says that the world is now in the post-Cold War period and that "...whenever you are in a period of transition, there is always instability. You have to view it in that perspective". During the Apollo era, the USA spent 5% of its total national budget on space projects, and now it lays out 0.9%. "It's different, but the expectations are the same," says Goldin.
Goldin states that the USA now has the technology, knowledge and management techniques, which can redress the balance. Also, in making the transition from the Cold War, "...there is more of a tendency to co-operate than to compete. It's causing a whole re-alignment of the space programme."
NEW RELATIONSHIPS
Competition with the former Soviet Union was terribly wasteful, "...especially if you are looking at space as a place to create opportunity, meet intellectual needs and to inspire. We are going through this transition now, and it's messy. It has starts and stops, it has passion. I think that's what's manifesting itself in the Congress. But we're coming through it, and I think that there's a terrific relationship between NASA, the American people, Congress, and the Administration."
Goldin hit NASA hard and fast when he arrived, cutting its budget and 55,000 jobs in Government and industry, from a starting point of 215,000 people. "We're better for it. Now we need a little stability. This roller-coaster ride has been really tough. We need a year or two to consolidate all these changes and get refocused," he says.
That NASA can spend $13 billion on the Space Station over the next five years is an innovation. "It's crucial. If you ran a business with year-to-year planning, you'd have a mess. That's how we were doing it before." Congress has re-affirmed US President Bill Clinton's position that NASA needs stability, and this has allowed the space organisation to build hardware. "We went ten years with nothing but paper and debate," says Goldin.
Russia's decision to join the Space Station programme undoubtedly went a long way towards saving it in Congress. "I see it differently - as very symbolic. We justified our space programmes by competing with each other, while we each had weapons of mass destruction. Now, we have the opportunity to undertake a mammoth technology project together, to benefit humanity," Goldin says.
Russia also has knowledge, which the USA does not, gleaned from operating the Mir 1 space station for nine years. "We needed something that the Russians had. We had no way of checking out all our designs and assembly procedures and scientific approaches before we built the Station. Working with the Russians on the Shuttle-Mir missions will help us to reduce risk," he says.
MORE FOR LESS
A second advantage to the partnership is that NASA is receiving knowledge and is being allowed to use equipment. It also enables NASA to cut costs. "To be credible, we had to reduce the cost of the Space Station. It was getting out of control," Goldin says.
If NASA had continued alone, it would have ended up with a station with less volume, less power, and fewer astronauts. In partnership with Russia, the power and volume has doubled, and NASA has an added two astronauts. "It is a paradox. We are getting more for less. And what did we do? We didn't let pride enter into it. We did what was right for the American people," Goldin says. Western Europe, Japan and Canada are also joining the programme. "This is a win, win, win situation," Goldin adds.
"This is a risk programme. We space pioneers deal with risk and don't worry so much," Goldin proclaims. "If Russia pulls out, NASA has still got a programme - albeit more expensive and one that will take longer to complete - and if they stay in, we've got a richer programme." Goldin would be amazed if the Russians pulled out. "The Russian people are as committed to space as any," he says.
Another reward is that, if Russian and US engineers and scientists are working together on the Space Station, instead of building ballistic missiles, "...you have a basis for understanding between people. Maybe when you understand people better, you don't launch missiles against them. To me this may be a very significant benefit," says Goldin.
The station programme depends greatly on the reliability of the Space Shuttle fleet. NASA is acutely aware that there could be another accident. Goldin likens his Shuttle fleet to an airline. "If there's an accident, the airline keeps flying. Are the American people and Congress mature enough to accept another accident? "It seems that the higher the level of technology, the more the emotional the concern about death," he says. "You lose a spaceship and people pour their hearts out."
Goldin hopes that people understand that explorers face danger. "Exploration is dangerous and, if we delude ourselves to say we want safe exploration, we are not exploring. So, we have to be mature and prepared.
"Even if you do everything you can, you could still lose a Shuttle. What you must not do is to search for the guilty and punish them, because, when you do that, you send the signal: don't take risks. NASA did not realise how high the risk was before the Challenger. We have a better appreciation of that now. I hope we have all matured," says Goldin. "If we lost a crew, I think that those astronauts would want us to continue and not to search our souls and lose a sense of self-assurance."
Goldin admits that the Space Shuttle is too expensive and not the perfect method of space transportation. "Much too expensive. Moving house, you use a truck for the furniture and go on ahead in an aircraft, not carry everything and everyone in the same vehicle," he says. With the X-33 programme, he is looking at a re-useable launch system with cargo carrying and man-rated vehicles.
"NASA is about going to the cutting edge. The Shuttle is an amazing machine, but it is based on technology 25 years old. We cannot afford to operate the Shuttle for $3 billion dollars a year. That's too much." He says that it is NASA's responsibility to reduce the cost, even if this means canceling programmes. He believes that NASA will find a way of getting a new launch system into the fleet, but he warns: "I want to be very careful. I call things like this a 'lizard-gator' - you try and make it everything to everyone and you end up with something that is too inefficient and too expensive."
Goldin says, that cargo and crew vehicles will be seen by 2005. Instead of starting a big programme in which the technology is frozen early, NASA will conduct experimental programmes, not to push the performance limits, but "...to prove re-usability, operability and affordability". A new vehicle will definitely be designed to enable crew escape from lift-off to landing, says Goldin. "We want to be able to prove that, in a single stage, it can lift itself off the ground and come back." For that, NASA needs very lightweight structural mass compared with the propellants and payloads, which will push advanced materials and structural designs to the limits. Engines with a high thrust-to-weight ratio will also be vital.
'NEW MILLENNIUM'
Goldin is definitely a "New Millennium" man. That is also the name of a programme which he has launched to develop new advanced technologies to enable NASA to fly ambitious, "faster, better, cheaper" missions into deep Space. "We used to invest technology in each programme separately. I don't want a one-shot, I want to fund this thing over a decade, each year pushing the limits. We are talking about revolutions in communications, propulsion and computers - expert decision making by artificial-intelligence systems - so that we can have a "thinking' spacecraft," he says.
He is enthusiastic about future missions and how the "thinking spacecraft" will help. "It will take us a decade to travel to Pluto and we will have 30min to collect all our data. Pluto is 8h away at the speed of light. We're going to do mission planning on the spacecraft. As the spacecraft gets closer and as the cameras begin to see features on Pluto, it will be able to learn and think and give instructions to the camera."
When Goldin arrived at NASA, a Pluto mission was to cost $2 billion, and now he thinks that the organisation could do the mission, if required, "for under $300 million". It is leapfrog technology, which can revolutionise information systems, communications, artificial-intelligence systems, and optics. Goldin says: "We can make orders-of-magnitude leaps forward. That's what we did during the formation of the space programme. Then we went into evolution. Revolution is back."
Source: Flight International
