A White
House panel tasked with reevaluating NASA's plans for future space exploration
has begun culling a list of potential options - one that ranges from staying
the current course to taking direct aim at sending humans to Mars.
The
10-member committee overseeing the Review for U.S. Human Space Flight Plans has
trimmed a larger list of 3,000 options down to about seven general scenarios,
which it plans to cull even further before presenting them to President Barack
Obama later this month.
"We have
our work cut out for us," the committee's chairman Norman Augustine, former
Lockheed Martin CEO, said Wednesday during a televised meeting in Washington,
D.C.
NASA's
current plan is to retire its aging space shuttle fleet in 2010 after
completing construction of the International Space Station and replace it with
a new
Orion vehicle. Orion and its Ares I rocket are slated to begin operational
flights in 2015 as NASA's larger plan to return humans to the moon by 2020. A
heavy-lift Ares V rocket is also planned to launch lunar landers and other
heavy cargo.
Potential
options
Committee
member Edward Crawley, an MIT professor, said that only three of the potential
scenarios under review by the committee take into account NASA's exploration
budget, now pegged at about $80 billion total through 2020. That's about $28
billion less than what the agency expected when it chose the Orion and Ares
rocket plan.
Those three
options include:
- NASA
Baseline Plan:
Stretch out the schedule for NASA's current Constellation program goals to
build and fly Orion and the Ares rockets within the budget available,
retire the shuttle fleet in 2011, and end United States involvement in the
16-country International Space Station in 2015. Rely on international
partners for crew and cargo transport until Orion and U.S. commercial
flights are available.
- Space
Station Focused:
Retire the shuttle fleet in 2011, but extend space
station operation through 2020. Rely on international partners for
crew and cargo transport until Orion and Ares I rockets, or commercial
flight, are available.
"This would be robust utilization of the space station, but
allows exploration to move off into the later distance future," said Crawley,
who leads the committee's subgroup studying destinations for human space
exploration. "It's a limiting case."
- Dash
Out of Low Earth Orbit: This option retains the shuttle fleet's 2011
retirement and the 2015 deadline for U.S. involvement in the space
station, but eliminates the Ares I rocket entirely in order to focus on
the heavy-lift Ares V rocket, which could then be used to launch Orion
flights to lunar orbit, near-Earth
asteroids or even planetary flybys. International partners would
provide crew and cargo transport until the larger Ares V comes online.
The "dash" option is aimed at launching manned missions
beyond low-Earth orbit as fast as possible, "therefore it makes no sense for us
to do anything other than rely on international partners and commercial
[companies] for crew access," Crawley said.
More
expensive scenarios
The
remaining scenarios under the committee's review would likely exceed or equal
the current budget planned for NASA's exploration goals, Crawley said. They
range from a more direct repurposing of space shuttle technology to sending
humans straight to Mars, though all could set the stage for potential in-orbit
refueling capabilities.
Those
options include:
- More
Directly-Shuttle Derived System: This scenario calls for flying the space shuttle
through 2015 and eventually replacing it with a system that more heavily
draws on the shuttle hardware, like its external tank and twin solid
rocket boosters. A potential Side-Mount Shuttle, which would use the tank
and boosters to launch a cargo pod or crew capsule instead of a reusable
orbiter, is one such plan. The shuttle would fly beyond 2011 at a rate of
up to two flights a year and the space station would fly until 2020.
Eventually, commercial crew launch services are envisioned.
- Deep
Space: This
option would retire the shuttle fleet in 2011 and extend space station
operations through 2020. It suggests developing U.S. crew launch
capability as a backup to services provided by international partners and commercial
interests. The focus would be building a heavy-lift vehicle capability of
launching astronauts on lunar orbital missions, near-Earth asteroid
missions and planetary flybys.
- Lunar
Global: The
shuttle replacement plans for this scenario are similar to those for the
Deep Space option, but the fleet would still retire in 2011 with the space
station continuing through 2020. Instead of setting up a short-duration
outpost on the moon, however, the aim would be for extended stays for more
exploration.
"This would prepare us to take the next step to Mars, having
spent some time on the moon," Crawley said.
- Mars
Direct: The
final option under the committee's eye largely skips the moon and focuses
on the sending astronauts directly
to Mars. Like others, it includes retiring the shuttle fleet by 2011
and extending the space station through 2020. International partners and
commercial companies would provide crew launch services while NASA
develops a fleet of Ares V rockets to launch crew and cargo to Mars. The
plan would only send humans to the moon or near-Earth asteroids in order
to test hardware for the Mars mission.
With their
handful of scenarios in hand, the spaceflight review committee plans to meet
Aug. 12 for one final public meeting to discuss the final options before
submitting a final report at the end of the month. Some committee members
Wednesday said NASA, and the United States in general, should choose to tackle
the most challenging projects in space.
Bohdan Bejmuk,
a former Boeing manager leading one of the committee's subgroups, said that
while flying in space is always hard, getting to low Earth orbit is slightly
easier than reaching the moon, or moving out toward Mars. Buying commercial launch
services to fly crew and cargo to low Earth orbit, he explained, would
free NASA's top minds to target more lofty goals.
"NASA has
brilliant people," Bejmuk said. "Get attention of these
brilliant people on the harder tasks, and think of buying the easier tasks from
[commercial] industry. "NASA would show off their skills by doing the hard
stuff...I think that process would elevate NASA in stature in America."
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