WASHINGTON — Will an Apollo-style capsule be given full consideration under NASA’s Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program, the very name of which suggests a vehicle with wings?

For NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, the answer is an unqualified yes. Speaking to reporters at a recent roundtable here, O’Keefe said there is nothing in NASA’s top level requirements document for the OSP that says the vehicle has to have wings, land on a runway or even be reusable.

O’Keefe said that contractors vying for the project should not read too much into the name of the program.

"I know that the parlor game in the industry is to sit back and cogitate about every nuance and head fake," O’Keefe said. "What we want is written down in the Level 1 requirements ... there isn’t a lot of interpretation required on this."

NASA’s Level 1 requirements for the Orbital Space Plane, which were released Feb. 18 after being delayed two weeks by the Columbia accident, fit on a single sheet of paper. The document makes clear that what NASA is looking for, in essence, is a crew transfer vehicle that by 2010 can launch on an expendable rocket and safely carry at least four people to the international space station.

"We were absolutely belligerent about making sure we boiled it down to something really straightforward rather than putting out this 18-volume set of the requirements document that required a Talmudic scholar to interpret for you," he said. "This is really straightforward."

But if there is any lingering doubt among industry about whether NASA is truly open to a capsule design, it is understandable, industry analysts said.

After all, it was only recently that NASA asked contractors to, as one aerospace executive put it, "open up the aperture and make sure we look at every architecture that might apply."

Bruce Mahone, director of space policy at the Rosslyn, Va.-based Aerospace Industries Association, said O’Keefe has been very clear of late that he is open to any and all designs that meet the requirements, but the prevailing wisdom until recently was that the OSP would be a reusable, winged vehicle.

Last summer, when NASA was in the middle of revamping its space transportation plans, the OSP concept was briefed to O’Keefe under a different name: RSTARS, which stood for the Reusable Space Transportation and Recovery System. Fed up with inscrutable acronyms, O’Keefe is said to have come up with the simpler Orbital Space Plane.

Mahone said that while NASA may be able to get behind a capsule, it remains to be seen whether Congress and the American public will go along. He said a capsule could very well turn out to be the right engineering approach to getting crew members to and from the station with the least cost and risk. But public reaction, he said, is the big wild card.

A capsule, with its associations of Apollo-era ocean splashdowns, is "clearly less prestigious" than a vehicle capable of runway landings, Mahone said.

"It would be analogous to someone deciding the president should drive around in a Volkswagon Beetle instead of a limousine, even if the Beetle was more fuel efficient, bullet proof and everything else," he said. "The problem would be perception."

Yet, Mahone said, the public is very focused on safety right now and the capsule approach has served the Russian space program well with no fatalities since three cosmonauts died in 1971 when their Soyuz depressurized during re-entry.

"If funding and safety rise to the top and a prestigious image is not as important, then I could see a capsule being a viable option," Mahone said. "If we decide we not only have to be the top but also look like the top then I could see insistence on a more complex, aircraft-type vehicle."

Lori Garver, vice president of the Washington consulting firm DFI International, disagreed with Mahone that prestige would come into play.

"I think in this case, NASA’s, the public’s and Congress’ interests are all lining up to try to get assured access to the space station for crew and ultimately for cargo in an efficient, safe and less expensive manner," she said.

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, said he was open to any design that would do the job safely and efficiently but then chided a capsule design as a "flying trashcan."

"When somebody talks about an Orbital Space Plane they are talking about something that bears some resemblance to a plane and not a bath tub or trash can or suitcase or trunk," he said. "My guess is what we are really looking for is something that is reusable, and from what I remember, capsules don’t lend themselves to reusability."

Still, Rohrabacher said he would not oppose a design purely on looks alone. "If somebody came in and showed me that a capsule, engineered in the right way, could accomplish all the things we need and was cheaper and would be ready to go quicker, then I would be open minded to it," he said. "What we need it something we can utilize [as soon as possible]."

U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, said NASA has yet to make its case to Congress for any type of Orbital Space Plane. Gordon said he would be looking for evidence that NASA has a plan to reduce and ultimately eliminate its dependence on the space shuttle. After that, he said, he is open to any design that can be "justified in terms of safety and economics."