LAS
VEGAS,
Nevada - Radical surgery is needed on NASA's vision for space exploration of
the Moon, Mars and beyond, according to a study released today by the Space Frontier
Foundation--a space advocacy group based in Nyack, New York.
The
assessment calls for immediate elimination of all work on the block 1 version
of NASA's
Crew Exploration Vehicle
(CEV) and to delay the shuttle
program-derived Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV)--a solid-rocket booster design now
escalating in cost--while reconsidering the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launchers.
The
policy white paper issued today is titled: "Unaffordable and Unsustainable--NASA's failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy." The group contends that NASA plans are flawed, prescribing as a fix far greater use of America's "New Space" industry that is energized by free enterprise and entrepreneurship.
Over
the past 30 months, NASA has made fundamental errors in its implementation of
President George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration enunciated in January
2004. There is urgent need, the Space Frontier Foundation's white paper states,
to force NASA to decisively transform its relationship with the private sector.
Opening salvo
"We've
put a lot of time into this ... and we do believe the study will have an impact,"
said Jeff Krukin, Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation. "Think
of this as an opening salvo in a long term strategy ... a long-term campaign," he
told SPACE.com.
The
18-page policy white paper recommends that the White House and Congress should
specify, as a matter of policy and/or law, that NASA cannot develop, build, own
or operate a new vehicle for crew or cargo missions to the International Space
Station or to other parts of low Earth orbit. For those missions, NASA must buy
a service from U.S. companies.
Furthermore,
the study counsels that the U.S. government should immediately transfer
two-to-three billion dollars from the CEV and CLV efforts to pay for an
additional round of what the group sees as a now under-funded Commercial
Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.
NASA
is to soon announce which private companies it has selected under the COTS
program to share in $500 million it intends to spend through 2010 to foster new
space station crew and cargo delivery services.
The
Space Frontier Foundation policy paper advocates adding at least $2 billion to
the COTS initiative, to create an additional COTS competition that would
promote six to eight additional contracts.
Major dead end
Spotlighted
in the study is a call to stop work on the CEV Block 1 which is designed for
missions to the International Space Station. That function can be handed over
to private space firms. NASA should focus on the CEV Block 2 that is
specifically targeted for Moon and beyond exploration goals.
Using
the tools of capitalism is now our nation's best, and only, chance to have an
affordable and sustainable human space exploration program, the white paper
explains.
"We're
headed for a major, major dead end," said Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of the
Space Frontier Foundation during the group's NewSpace 2006 conference, held
here July 19-23 and co-sponsored by the Aerospace Division of the American
Society of Civil Engineers.
"We're
going to keep pounding the drum and it's going to get louder and louder,"
Tumlinson said.
The
current NASA architecture of spacecraft and boosters to put in place a space
vision of exploration is not going to happen, Tumlinson advised. "It's going to
collapse of its own weight. What I worry about is that it's going to take
science down with it ... going to take down all the other possibilities at the same
time...it is politically unsustainable and is technically off the rails."
Open and respectful
Wendell
Mendell, a space planner at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, said
that space agency teams are engaged in priorities and prioritizations, as well
as being aware of "steering currents."
"Quite
frankly those considerations have a lot to do with engineering and budget,
space access systems, and, ultimately, politics," Mendell told the audience.
NASA
teams are being very "open and respectful" of the universe of ideas and is open
to the idea of dialog and interaction, Mendell said. He said he was "cautiously
optimistic" that as NASA plans grow over the next few years there will be more
opportunities for "a constructive interaction as opposed to a prescriptive
interaction," he said.
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