"He sure knows where the bodies are buried," said one Capitol Hill staffer.
So when McCoy says that the U.S. space launch industry has been, well, out to launch, he just might know what hes talking about.
"Theres been too much cut, cut, cut. Theres been too much emphasis on the longer-term future and not enough on the here and now."
And what McCoy talked about to space.com during a recent interview in his Crystal City, Virginia, offices is the state of the space industry at the close of one really bad year.
What with rocket failures setting a new, short-term record, and his old stomping grounds the U.S. Air Force blasting the state of space launch preparedness, McCoy had some choice words of his own for his colleagues in the industry.
"Theres been too much cut, cut, cut," McCoy said. "Theres been too much emphasis on the longer-term future and not enough on the here and now."
Uncertain Promise for EELVs
The U.S. space launch industry is in the midst of a major reorganization, making way for the next generation of expendable rocket, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle or EELV.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin each are building families of the new rockets. Boeings EELV series is called the Delta 4. Lockheeds the Atlas 5. Together the new designs are to replace the older rocket fleet by the middle of the next decade.
But in 1999, different versions of the Lockheed Titan failed. Boeings Delta 3 also suffered a second straight launch failure.
Of 1999s near-record number of launch failures, McCoy bluntly said it was the fault of U.S. industry and its government customers to stay focused on flying off what he called "legacy systems" -- todays ballistic missile-derived launchers -- while planning to move to the new rockets of the decade ahead.
"There doesnt seem to be a technical correlation, a high correlation between all of these failures," he predicted. "But the Air Force review clearly showed that the industry and the military and everybody from the Congress to the Executive Branch took their eye off the ball".
How did that affect the launches today? McCoy suggested that as industry focused on the changes that the new generations of rockets would bring, "they cut back both top managements attention and time, and cut back people."
"People pay attention to what the boss is paying attention to. In this case, the bosses in Congress and the bosses in the Pentagon are paying attention to future systems and breakthrough technology and so forth. The older systems are kind of poo-pooed as out of style, out of date,'" McCoy said.
Once that happens, McCoy said, "you get a little bit less concentration" of key managers and personnel, who are shifted to the newer programs.
"But meanwhile you still have to operate the existing (rockets) systems, as well as manage the transition. We didnt seem to handle that too well," he said. And if that happens, "you're history", he said.
"They dont call it rocket science for nothing."
Existing rockets are overlooked
The older American rockets, "because theyre old and weve flown them before, we think we can cut, cut." In policy circles, McCoy said, the new gets the best resources. " All we want to do is talk about the new stuff, and worry about the new stuff. And fight over the new contracts. And I think the point was that the older launch systems are not simple just because theyre old. And in fact they are more complex because theyre older."
Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin responded to the Air Force report on the 1999 launch failures by pledging to add manpower and resources during the decade-long transition from todays Delta, Atlas and Titan designs to the next generation boosters that will start flight testing in 2001.
But what about the longer term future of space transportation?
"I think the industry is torn between making the next step up technologically and short term needs," he said. But there were some positive developments during the year.
Hope resides in new competition
McCoy pointed to NASAs shift from depending upon the Lockheed X-33 and Venturestar reusable launcher as the potential follow-on to the space shuttle to a new competition ending in 2005 to pick a possible different design as a positive development.
"The small guys may get another chance in this new competition," McCoy said. "They were eliminated by Lockheed during the X-33, but now maybe NASA will give these smaller designs a chance" to try radical new approaches to space launch.
He also suggested that the U.S. might need to create a "transit authority" for space launch. Such an authority would be responsible for the operations and maintenance of Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Base, the two main U.S. spaceports.
"We need to look at how the states manage transportation by creating a new, semi-autonomous group that operates transit hubs but the government is a partner," McCoy said.
McCoy suggested that the cabinet or President could referee any differences among the new launch authority.
"You can bet that theyll be somebody unhappy about something from time to time," McCoy remarked. "Youll have a NASA director, and a military commander, and of course a commercial operator, so somebody will have to play referee."
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