Officials: CEV Contest Could Turn Up A Better Lander

This could become NASA's version of the X-Prize, only contestants wouldn't be trying to get their spacecraft into low orbit. They'd be trying to land on the moon.

The new head of NASA's effort to find a CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) says a healthy, all-out design competition could produce a moon lander in extremely (by design standards) short order.

"We could have (CEV) prototypes flying as soon as 2009, possibly 2008," said Retired Adm. Craig E. Steidle.

Under his plan, aerospace companies would propose designs to meet President Bush's order that the current fleet of space shuttles, grounded since last year's Columbia disaster, stand by as soon as 2010. The CEV would probably first be tasked to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station, with moon missions later on. Even further down the road, CEV-derived designs could take astronauts to the Moon or even Mars.

But engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston (TX) tell UPI that they don't like the idea of a fly-off competition, even though they're a matter of course for the nation's military (witness the JSF competition between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin). They say it's never been done before in the agency's 45-year history.

Steidle promises he'll pick a design for the CEV by the end of the year.

FMI: www.nasa.gov