WASHINGTON (States News Service) - NASA and aerospace industry representatives told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Wednesday that the future of space travel lies in the commercial sector. The agency hopes to have the next generation of piloted space vehicles operational by 2008.
NASA is still conducting its Space Transportation Architecture Studies that will help it determine how commercial launch companies can serve NASA's needs over the next twenty years, said Chief Engineer Daniel Mulville.
"Our objective is to lower the risk to less than one in 1,000 for loss of vehicle, and one in 10,000 for loss of crew," Mulville said.
The agency is turning from providing all of its own launching assets to renting launch capability from private companies with reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). The RLVs would carry crew vehicles bound for the International Space Station (ISS), which will remain NASA's primary presence is space.
NASA is hoping to entertain bids from several companies in 2005 for the chance to start building the successor to the shuttle.
"We envision many of these systems to be first demonstrated as cargo systems [by 2006 or 2007] and then to evolve into human carrying systems [between 2008 and 2012]," Mulville said. "We are hoping that some of them can move backward to an earlier point in time."
For example, one of the many proposals for the crew vehicle comes from Orbital Sciences. Their "Space Taxi" is an 18-ton, seven-person vehicle that could be coupled with either an expendable launch rocket or an RLV. It would have limited cargo ability, but would only need six flights per year to meet all NASA requirements for servicing the ISS, said Orbital executive vice president, Michael Griffin.
Thomas Rogers, former president of the Space Transportation Association and its current chief scientist, made an emotional plea for the future of humans in space.
"Humans ought to be used where humans are uniquely useful, not just to apply needle-nose pliers and tin snips," Rogers said. "The most important role for people in space is to be there."
At the same time, he said, NASA should pay more attention to the economic, rather than scientific limits of its missions.
"There's a time when you stop talking like a technology developer and you start talking like a businessman," Thomas said. The task of taking payloads to and from orbit can be automated and made cheaper, he said.
Future launch systems must have the flexibility to lift a wide range of payloads, Mulville said, and be able to last for decades.
"We don't know what we'll be doing in 2020 or 2030," Mulville said.
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