NASA Safety Panel Seeks No Change In Half-Decade NASA Space Flight Gap Despite Concerns About Soyuz Safety

NASA needs stability in its policy, goals and requisite funding if the largest space agency on the planet is to be able to properly execute its many complex, expensive, long- term programs in a safe and cost-effective manner, a NASA safety panel stated in a new report.

The annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), mandated by Congress, was issued as President Obama is writing his proposal for the next NASA budget, covering the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010. There is great uncertainty as to just how much, or how little, support Obama may provide to the agency.

For example, he may decide to kill the Ares I rocket that is needed to boost the next-generation U.S. spaceship, called Orion, into orbit. NASA has poured enormous sums and years of effort into the Ares I development effort, part of the Constellation Program to develop a spaceship replacement for the space shuttles.

That Orion crew exploration vehicle, being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT], won’t have its first manned flight until 2015, even if funding is stable and all goes well, half a decade after the space shuttles stop flying next year.

But Obama may substitute another lifter for Ares I, a military rocket not currently rated for human spaceflight. The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) rockets include the Delta IV designed by The Boeing Co. [BA] and the Atlas V designed by Lockheed. The rockets are marketed by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing- Lockheed joint venture.

Individual segments of Ares 1, on the other hand, are being developed separately by Boeing, Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].

It is unclear just how abandoning years of Ares I development efforts and turning now to develop human-rated EELVs would affect the 2015 timing of the first manned Orion mission to the International Space Station, and also the 2020 timing of the first Orion mission to the moon.

Further, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, while in office, pointed out to an Obama transition aide that the EELV might be able to lift Orion to low Earth orbit, to the space station, but wouldn’t be able to perform all the work that Ares I must do.

“The [NASA report panel] suggests that stability of policy and technical goals is particularly crucial for complex, expensive, safe, long-term programs and for cost-efficient, cost-effective, and safe mission plans and workers,” the ASAP panel cautioned.

Volatile changes in requirements, direction, funding, schedules, and other items can endanger the ability of NASA to execute its responsibilities, the panel indicated.

To be sure, the panel isn’t suggesting inflexibility, stating that reviews and modifications of goals, at periodic intervals, would be well advised. For example, as technological advances emerge over years and decades, they might be incorporated into a space system.

“Because change is inevitable over a 20-year life cycle, such course corrections are required,” the panel stated.

However, contracts for Ares I were awarded just two years ago, and rocket technology hasn’t undergone seismic changes since then. The two EELV rockets, Delta IV and Atlas V, originally flew their first separate missions seven years ago.

Panel Endorses Gap

In other comments, the ASAP panel opposed any move to reduce the yawning half-decade gap during which NASA, the only space agency to put men on the moon, won’t be able to get even one astronaut off the ground in a NASA spaceship.

Still, the panel added in its report that if this advice is ignored and a decision is made to continue flying the space shuttles beyond next year, then that decision should be made promptly, because some operations crucial to shuttle flights are beginning to terminate.

Former President Bush ordered the space shuttle fleet to stop flying next year, and the Orion-Ares spaceship system won’t have its first manned flight until 2015. Meanwhile, the United States will be reduced to paying the Russians to taxi American astronauts to the space station on Soyuz space vehicles.

Many members of Congress on both sides of Capitol Hill have deplored this, asking why American taxpayers are handing money to the Russians to transport U.S. astronauts, when the money could have gone to further NASA space shuttle flights. Even Griffin, while in office, termed this half-decade grounding of the premier space agency “unseemly.” But the decisions creating the gap were set in stone before Griffin took the helm at NASA.

The ASAP panel spelled out its opposition to extending shuttle flights.

“Although continuing to fly the Shuttle would minimize the U.S. launch vehicle services gap (currently projected at 5 years) between Shuttle retirement and the beginning of Constellation flights, the ASAP does not favor this approach,” the panel argued.

“Shuttle support and manufacturing capabilities are dwindling and possibly not restorable,” and the “contractor manufacturing base and third-tier suppliers are starting to shut down.”

Further, “The capability to manufacture and integrate specific long-lead items (e.g., the External Tank) will very soon be too degraded to restore efficiently, cost- effectively, and in a timely manner.” As well, “Key personnel positions are slated for elimination in the first half of” this year, and “Supplier tiers and personnel skill mixes complicate retention of necessary infrastructure.”

Additionally, “Continuing to fly the Shuttle requires reevaluation of crew and mission safety. Relatively high levels of inherent risk reside in the Shuttle design, and these risks rise as more flights are attempted. Indeed, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) recommended recertification of the Space Shuttle at the material, component, subsystem, and system levels if it flies beyond 2010.”

NASA has, however, spent enormous sums and taken years of effort to make space shuttles far safer than they were before the Space Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003. And it is a truism that the term “safe space travel” is an oxymoron, because there is no such thing. Space travel always will carry the risk of injury or death for astronauts.

The ASAP panel added a further comment that, as a matter of pure mathematics and probabilistic reality, is undeniably true: the more times space shuttles fly, the greater the probability that an accident will occur.

Overall, however, the panel looked approvingly on NASA safety efforts.

“Today, NASA continues to make progress in flying safely,” the report found, pointing to several NASA safety achievements:

  • Successful return to flight of the [space shuttle fleet] following the loss of Columbia
  • Effective management of known safety issues in the reliable conduct of Shuttle flights
  • Ongoing development, buildout, and maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS)
  • Continual management effort to create and nurture open dialogue and discourse on technical differences”

Space missions also are safer because NASA has the proper fundamentals in place to detect risks, the report continued.

“NASA is improving the technical and management processes that underlie safe operations and space flights,” the ASAP panel found.

To read the 151-page report and appendices titled “Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Annual Report for 2008” in entirety, please go to http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oer/asap/documents/2008_ASAP_Annual_Report.pdf on the Web. It carries a picture of Ares I on the cover, and pictures of Earth and of Mars as seen from space.