The deputy chair of the Defense Department’s RD-180 rocket study committee believes the United States could replicate the coding and metallurgy technology involved with the Russian-produced engine, but questioned whether that should be done with 40-year-old technology. “I think the national level question is not could we, but should we,” Schafer Corporation Chairman and CEO and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin said May 8 during the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee’s (COMSTAC) biannual meeting in Washington.…
