NASA Overhauling SLI To Fund Station Lifeboat

Frank Morring, Jr. / Washington

Delta IV launch would permit early hike in space station crew size for scientists, international partners; RLV development delayed

NASA is restructuring the $4.8 billion Space Launch Initiative (SLI) to give it a near-term focus on building a crew rescue vehicle for the International Space Station, shifting as much as $2.4 billion through Fiscal 2007 into development of an "orbital spaceplane" that would allow the station to accommodate a larger crew than the three currently authorized.

Initially a down-only rescue version of the new vehicle could be delivered empty to the ISS on a heavy-lift version of the Delta N rocket, eliminating the need to rate a new rocket for human passengers while advancing the date NASA's international partners could be accommodated in a larger station crew. Later, it could fly up and down with crews on a new human-rated reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that was the original goal of the SU, according to information released last week by Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee.

Details of the shift in SLI plans will be incorporated in NASA's upcoming Fiscal 2004 budget request, which is still under discussion between the agency and the White House Office of Management and Budget pending its release in February 2003. In general, NASA wants to spend more than half of the $4.6 billion remaining in the funding "wedge" provided for SLI on the new winged vehicle, be- ginning with a $296-million reprogramming in Fiscal 2003, which started Oct. 1, according to sources with access to budget planning documents.

However, NASA told Hall on Sept. 30 that it would not be able to field even a down-only vehicle at ISS until 20 1 0, four years after Russia's obligation to supply the station with Soyuz vehicles expires. The agency also told Hall it had no plans to buy Soyuz capsules from Russia, a policy that probably would be blocked by anti-proliferation legislation in any event. That position leaves an open question on how crew rescue would be handled after 2006.

NASA has slipped the SLI milestone schedule indefinitely to accommodate the restructuring. In a brief announcement Oct. 21, the SLI program office at Marshall Space Flight Center said a Systems Requirements Review scheduled to begin next month was postponed pending additional study. The review was to have fed the choice of one or more second-generation RLV architectures, which in turn would drive which of the SLI technology development tasks already underway would continue to get funding.

"NASA will reschedule the review when the agency completes its assessment of the Integrated Space Transportation Plan, ascertains the role of the Defense Dept. in the SU, determines the future requirements of the International Space Station and firms up the agency's future space transportation needs," the announcement stated.

An agency manager said the assessment would take "months" to complete. Mean- while, work will continue on SLI activities already under contract, such as preburner tests on the Rocketdyne RS-83 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engine at Stennis Space Center (AW&ST July 29, p. 61). The requirements review delay follows a congressional General Accounting Office report in September that criticized plans to conduct the review this year as premature (AW&ST Oct. 7, p. 23).

Jeremiah F. Creedon, who oversees SLI as associate administrator for aerospace technology, said last week that the civilian agency will take the time needed to incorporate requirements for lSS, the space shuttle and a third-generation reusable launch vehicle into its Integrated Space Transportation Plan (ISTP) before setting final SLI requirements.

Military input would be more piecemeal, Creedon said, as the Pentagon's interagency National Aerospace Initiative takes shape (AW&ST May 20, p. 32). Administrator Sean O'Keefe took part this month in a meeting of the "Partnership Council" that charts research and development cooperation between NASA and the Defense Dept. At that meeting, former astronaut Ron Sega, the Pentagon's director of research and engineering, was given responsibility for melding the space access requirements of NASA and the military services with broader defense technology requirements like air-breathing hypersonic propulsion (AW&ST Oct. 14, p. 26).

Some details of NASA's space-access planning emerged Oct. 22 when Hall released O'Keefe's response to a letter requesting information on the agency's decision to terminate the X-38 ISS lifeboat project. The X-38 project was centered at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

In his Sept. 30 cover letter, O'Keefe told Hall: "I anticipate the ISTP review will conclude shortly. The outcome of the ISTP update will be a road map for future investment decisions, and is likely to result in modifications to the current program." In specific responses apparently prepared by officials at NASA headquarters and the SLI program office at Marshall, the agency outlined a tentative plan !o build a fleet of three "multipurpose vehicles" to meet NASA's unique requirement for human access to the ISS.

Cost estimates for the vehicles "are being refined as part of the ISTP update and Fiscal 2004 budget decisions," the document stated, although it cited a 1999 independent assessment that found it would cost $3 billion to build a down-only crew return vehicle using the X-38 approach. Hall noted in a press release accompanying the document that the $3-billion estimate is roughly double earlier public X-38/CRV cost estimates.

"NASA has conducted a study that indicates that adding the crew rescue requirements to a CTV [Crew Transfer Vehicle] would result in a relatively small cost impact (approximately 10-20% increase in development cost) to the CTV design," the NASA response stated. "No detailed analysis yet exists of the operational cost impact of a multipurpose vehicle."

The Sept. 30 document also claimed technology from a CTV "could provide considerable potential benefit in the development of an RLV capability or a military spaceplane. A common booster stage that serves both NASA and the [Defense Dept.] is a potentially attractive option."

O'Keefe has been looking for a way to answer complaints from NASA's international partners on the ISS and the science community that the three-person crew isn't large enough for planned scientific and engineering research. But he has also been restricted by a $4.8-billion shortfall on U.S. station funding that led him to limit the crew in the first place to the number that can be rescued by a single Soyuz. The two-way crew vehicle, with early launch on an expendable rocket, was one option presented by the SLI office in response to O'Keefe's call for help (AW&ST July 1, p. 33; May 20, p. 46).