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The Fight Over NASA’s Future

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

( New York edition ) NASA has named the rocket Ares I, as in the god of war — and its life has been a battle from the start. Ares I is part of a new system of spacecraft being designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to replace the nation’s aging space shuttles. The Ares I and its Orion capsule, along with a companion heavy-lift rocket known as the Ares V, are meant for travel to the Moon and beyond. Technical troubles have dogged the design process for the Ares I, the first of the rockets scheduled to be built, with attendant delays and growing costs. And in an age of always-on communication, instant messages and blogs, internal debate that once might have been part of a cloistered process has spilled into public view. Some critics say there are profound problems with the design that render the Ares I dead on arrival, while other observers argue that technical complications crop up in any spacecraft development program of this scope. The issues have become a focus of the members of the presidential transition team dealing with NASA, and the space program could undergo a transformation after Barack Obama takes office. During his campaign, Mr. Obama expressed support for NASA and criticized the five-year gap between the scheduled end of the space shuttle program in 2010 and the planned debut of the first components of the new system, which NASA has given the overall name Constellation, in 2015. (During the pause in American flights — a Bush administration plan to conserve money during the development process — the United States will depend on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft for trips to the International Space Station.) But NASA, which has a $17 billion annual budget and most likely would face higher expenses if the gap is to be narrowed and the new program kept on track, will be competing for money as the new administration faces urgent and expensive crises. The Obama transition team, in meetings and requests for information from NASA, contractors and others with a stake in the process, has asked whether increased financing can narrow the five-year flight gap by speeding development of the new spacecraft. The advisers have also asked what the costs and consequences might be of continuing to fly the shuttles for at least one or two additional flights, or even to keep flying them until the next system is ready. The team has also asked whether the development program is truly in trouble and, if so, whether the Ares I should be modified or replaced by rockets used by the Air Force to launch satellites, or the Ariane 5 rocket from Europe. While some involved in developing the rockets have read volumes into the questions, a spokesman for the transition team, Nick Shapiro, said that “the role of the agency review teams is not to make recommendations on any of the issues they are reviewing. They are fact-finding and preparing the full range of options for consideration by the incoming appointees.” Nonetheless, tensions have increased between the incoming administration and the management of NASA, whose administrator, Michael D. Griffin, is fighting to keep the program on course. If he is not reappointed by Mr. Obama, his term will end Jan. 20. John Logsdon, a space historian at the Smithsonian Institution, said Mr. Griffin was fighting for a program “which he’s put his whole reputation on.” On the other hand, Dr. Logsdon said, a new president needs to press and probe. “Any administration making a choice that’s going to last for a generation needs to make that choice for itself,” he said.

A New Direction

In an enormous barnlike building at the Kennedy Space Center earlier this year, officials proudly showed off a prototype of the heat shield of the new Orion capsule, a rounded disc some 15 feet across. Startlingly large but oddly prosaic — it looked like nothing so much as a gigantic muffin top — it served as a powerful symbol for those at the space center. It meant the first pieces of test hardware were moving from computer screens to reality. Metal, as they say, is being bent. President Bush announced the new direction for the space program in January 2004, nearly a year after the loss of the shuttle Columbia underscored the risks inherent in the spacecraft — especially the potential for debris to strike it during launching. In 2005, NASA lifted the curtain on the Constellation program, with the Orion capsule that would ride on top of its rocket, Ares I, out of the way of launch debris. It would be capable of carrying six astronauts; Apollo held three. The Ares rockets are very different — both from the shuttle and each other. Ares I, uses as its first stage a lengthened solid rocket booster like the ones used by the shuttle. The second stage is a rocket that will burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, as the shuttle’s main engines do. Atop the stack will sit the Orion capsule. The first test of an unmanned Ares I could take place next summer. The test, however, will use a spacecraft that is very different from the Ares I to come. It will involve a solid rocket booster of the same length that the shuttle uses, and the second stage and capsule will be dummies. Four more test flights are scheduled before the rocket is used beginning in 2015. The Ares V is a much brawnier rocket designed to send equipment to the Moon and beyond. Its first stage includes two solid rocket boosters and a liquid-fueled set of six rocket engines. >> read more

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The Fight Over NASA’s Future

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