New NASA administrator Michael Griffin has given the agency a kick in the pants in the search for its next heavylift launcher
NASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, has hit the ground running and with the intent, it seems, of thoroughly shaking up the lumbering organisation. Within mere weeks of his rapid confirmation by Congress, Griffin has made clear that NASA is not moving fast enough to replace the Space Shuttle, that the Shuttle will not fly again until NASA is sure it is safe, and that a robotic mission to repair the Hubble space telescope is off the table and a Shuttle servicing mission is to be planned.
So far this bold style of leadership is earning the new administrator a reputation as a no-nonsense decision maker who will cut through the sedentary NASA bureaucracy. Griffin made clear it was the Shuttle programme team that took the decision to delay launch of the return-to-flight mission to mid-July, but that decision must have been easier to take knowing that NASA's new leader is respected by politicians and, so far it seems, the public.
During his confirmation hearing, Griffin said that 2014 was too long to wait for the first manned flight of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) given that the Shuttle must be retired in 2010. He has been true to his words, and a single contractor team will be chosen by the end of this year instead of 2008, with the CEV to fly as early as 2010. Griffin also said he would review his predecessor's decision not to send a Shuttle to repair the Hubble. Again true to his words, and despite delaying the Shuttle's return to flight, he has ordered NASA to move ahead with a servicing mission as soon as NASA feels comfortable the Shuttle is flying safely. The study will be conducted alongside return-to-flight activity.
Now Griffin has waded into the debate over the heavylift launch vehicle needed to realise the USA's vision for space exploration. This is the elephant in the corner that neither NASA, the government or its contractors seem to want to talk about – because the funding required to develop a modern-day equivalent of the Saturn V could derail the budget plans for NASA's space exploration programme. A heavylift launcher is needed because getting to the Moon, Mars and beyond is no lightweight task. A trip to the Moon will require 100t of payload to be placed into low-Earth orbit. Up to 20t of that will be the CEV, and the rest will be made up of the mission module, trans-lunar rocket stages and the lunar surface access module that will land on the Moon, give the crew somewhere to live, then take them back into orbit for the journey home. The best the USA's biggest available boosters can do is lift 20t into orbit.
Griffin has given public backing to a Shuttle-derived launch vehicle, or SDLV, although officially no decision has been made while NASA awaits an analysis of alternatives. That analysis is based on 18 months of study by industry and the space. It is no surprise Griffin just wants to get on with it. Where it would require five launches of the Boeing Delta IV or Lockheed Martin Atlas V expendable boosters to get everything needed for a Moon mission into orbit, the SDLV could do it in two – one for the CEV and one for everything else. Yes, the Shuttle has a reputation for being expensive to operate, but almost all of the complexity is associated with the orbiter, which would not be part of an SDLV. A modified Shuttle solid rocket booster would be used to launch the CEV and a modified Shuttle stack – minus the orbiter – would be used as the cargo delivery system. But while it all seems to make good sense, there is no budget and no plan to develop the vehicle – and White House space policy requires NASA and the Department of Defense to work together to provide a recommendation on a heavylift vehicle.
For someone new to the job, Griffin's public espousal of the SDLV might seem premature. But he is not new to NASA. He was previously its chief engineer. Griffin has a deep understanding of the agency's launch systems and he is right to choose it. Right because the launch infrastructure is already in place; because the in-house NASA technical know-how is still intact; because the contractors and subcontractors involved represent a politically and economically significant national investment; because a detailed technical study of a cargo-carrying Shuttle-C has already been performed; and because it avoids the difficult and potentially dangerous process of shutting down the Shuttle programme by 2010.
The USA cannot walk away from 30 years of investment, and abandoning the Shuttle legacy would be doing just that. Griffin's vision of an evolved-Shuttle exploration system is the right way to the Moon and Mars.
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Source: Flight International
