Despite
ongoing work to launch its next shuttle
flight by July, NASA's greatest challenge lies further ahead in the coming shift
to a new spaceship by 2014, the U.S. space agency's chief said Tuesday.
NASA
administrator Michael Griffin said that proper handling of the agency's workforce
while it is refocused - and reduced - for the Crew Exploration
Vehicle is vital for nation's spaceflight future as the shuttle
fleet approaches a 2010 retirement.
"To be
clear, NASA will not need as many engineers and technicians on the shop floor
to operate and maintain the CEV and Crew Launch
Vehicle (CLV) as we do today with the space shuttle," Griffin told the Senate's science and space subcommittee, adding that both new
vehicles are designed to be simpler and cheaper than NASA orbiters. "Change is
hard, but if we don't act now to bring it about, we will not develop the space
program that we want to have."
Some
shuttle workers will be transferred to other CEV support programs where their
skills can be applied, Griffin added.
Griffin also
maintained that he is optimistic NASA will meet its July window to launch the STS-121
shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS),
marking the agency's second test flight following the 2003 Columbia disaster. Shuttle
program managers are expected to pick a launch date from the mission's July
1-19 window on Thursday, he added.
NASA hopes
to launch as many as three
shuttle missions this year - beginning with STS-121 and followed by two ISS construction flights
- pending the resolution of ongoing external
tank wind tunnel tests to verify modifications to the tank's foam
insulation.
Griffin
said the shuttle is key to completing the ISS by 2010, but the space station's
value as a science platform will be muted without a reliable orbital transit
system beyond the shuttle's retirement.
"We can
only realize the potential of the space station if we have a robust space
transportation system to ferry crew, experiments and equipment to and from the
station," Griffin said.
Senators
made it clear that minimizing any gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability during
the gulf spanning the 2010 shuttle retirement and 2014 deadline for the CEV is
paramount.
"If there
is a capability for Americans to go into space between 2010 and 2014, I will
feel much more secure," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson
(R-Texas), chair of the space and science subcommittee, told Griffin.
But the
NASA chief stressed that technological and funding challenges made
a seamless transition almost impossible, given the space agency's tasks of completing the
ISS before the shuttle fleet retires, its exploration push to fly manned CEV
flights by 2014 and the agency's goal of returning astronauts to the Moon by
2020.
"We are technology
limited to the 2011 to 2012 timeframe, we're funding limited for later dates
than that," Griffin said, adding that he hopes to secure commercial cargo - and
later crew - access to orbit and the ISS during that 2010 to 2014 gap.
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