While the astronauts and flight directors work on improved flight operations, directors are preparing the Shuttle to re-enter old territory - commercial activities. Daniel Goldin, NASA administrator is giving his full support and encouragement to the United Space Alliance to take the Shuttle back into the commercial launch business, possibly as early as 2002.
The Alliance is the Lockheed Martin Boeing company which was awarded a $7 billion, six-year contract in 1996 to operate the Space Shuttle system privately. A brace of two-year contract extensions are planned, bringing the total contract value to about $10 billion.
Goldin has reduced the Shuttle operations budget by $2 billion a year since 1992, and the aim in forming the Alliance was to reduce operational costs still further, providing money to be transferred to other programmes. Safety will always be the number one priority and will not be jeopardised, say NASA and the Alliance.
Given today's fiscal climate, the only way NASA can mount a mega programme such as a manned flight to Mars will be to reduce the cost of other programmes. The Alliance has already delivered $400 million in savings since its first mission in control (in November 1996), achieved by employee transfers and lay-offs and by contract consolidation.
The Alliance delivered its "Shuttle Privatisation Development Plan" to NASA on 1 October. It sees several areas where the Shuttle can be competitive with other unmanned launchers and identifies unique capabilities of the system which can be exploited.
The Shuttle could be entered into the commercial satellite-launcher market to compete with the leading expendable launchers such as Arianespace's Ariane. "The Alliance cannot afford to run the Shuttle without private funding," says chief executive James Adamson, a former astronaut-mission specialist.
The irony is that this will mean that the Shuttle will be in competition with the Boeing Sea Launch and Lockheed Martin Atlas and Delta boosters in the market for geostationary satellite launches.
On paper, the Shuttle could be used by NASA to make a killing - carrying three communications satellites in one go, albeit to low-Earth orbit, from where the craft's perigee stages would be fired to place them in the geostationary transfer orbits into which they would normally be placed by expendable vehicles. The Shuttle's major advantage is that it can carry payloads that cannot be carrier on expendable launch vehicles, such as larger payloads and space laboratories.
The Alliance sees other markets for the Shuttle, such as retrieving and repairing satellites in orbit and retrieving and returning spacecraft from orbit. Other jobs would include the commercial trucking of payloads to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and flying Earth observation and science missions for other countries. Adamson does not rule out the possibility that the Shuttle's boosters could carry company logos.
For the Shuttle operator to re-enter the commercial market will mean overturning two Space Acts passed in the 1980s after the Challenger accident. These forbade the use of the Shuttle for flying commercial satellites and military payloads unless necessary. That decision resulted in the saving of the Atlas and Delta fleets to serve the commercial market, and the birth of the Titan 4 to carry military satellites.
NASA would like to increase the Shuttle flight rate of eight a year to perhaps 15 by 2007. This could be achieved by a gradual increase from eight to ten by 1999 and then to 12 by the year 2002.
This kind of flight rate can only be achieved with upgrades to the system, says the Alliance, including fly-back, re-usable liquid boosters to replace the existing solid-rocket boosters and new ground equipment such as a new launch-vehicle platform at the Kennedy Space Center.
The Alliance says that the more commercial work it gets, the more it can invest in the improvements to the system. There is no possibility of the Alliance operating the systems entirely without NASA funds, however - the Shuttle is a NASA asset, not the Alliance's. Commercialisation plans will also need Government support.
Source: Flight International
