Race To Complete Plans For Shuttle Replacement

Nobody is sure what the Orbital Space Plane will finally look like -- whether it'll be a winged vehicle or a capsule. But one thing is for certain. The OSP is on the fast-track.

By 2008, the OSP is supposed to be up and flying as a rescue vehicle for the International Space Station. By 2012, it's supposed to be ready for two-way crew transfers.

"We're making progress, a lot of good progress," says Dennis Smith, Orbital Space Plane program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville (AL). "The contractor teams are performing well and they are working hard. We are treating this as a kind of partnership, and we're working well together."

Smith says the OSP is designed as an economy model. NASA doesn't plan to spend any more than $13 billion on its development before 2009. "We're the first program that is being implemented under full-cost accounting," says Smith.

But not everyone is happy with the OSP. Some see it as the ultimate in retro-engineering. "It's a giant leap backwards," complains one space industry analyst. "NASA has an open checkbook right now to get the shuttle flying. The problem is that they are looking for the cheapest solution in terms of a backup, and that would be the OSP. But even that's not cheap."

The skepticism extends to some offices on Capitol Hill. Congressmen Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Ralph Hall (D-TX) lead the House Science Committee. "Mr. Hall and I have called on NASA not to move ahead yet with a Request for Proposals for the Orbital Space Plane," says Boehlert, speaking at a forum on NASA's future. "We're not, by the way, calling for a complete halt to the program, but we don't want to start taking steps that seem irrevocable."

Indeed, even as companies like Lockheed-Martin put manpower and resources on the line for the OSP, they're doing it with frequent glances over their corporate shoulders. "We're worried as much as keeping the program sold at NASA Headquarters and on Capitol Hill as we are about winning the program," says former astronaut Michael Coates, now a VP for Advanced Space Transportation at Lockheed-Martin.

What Will It Look Like?

So far, the capsule advocates seem to be winning -- especially if one major goal is to get the OSP up and running ASAP. "A winged vehicle would take a long time to develop," says Coates.

Dale Myers agrees. He was a key engineer on the Apollo project. Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics earlier this year, Myers said, "It appears to me that the robust launch escape system of Apollo, which worked over a wide range from the launch pad to high altitude, will be hard to beat in a winged vehicle."

All eyes are on NASA now. John Logsdon, Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, was a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). "The OSP program is extremely important in terms of reflecting, first of all, whether NASA's really going to change its behavior and not try to pursue a project that's driven by [NASA] center interests and contractor interests but is driven by national interests. I fall back on what the CAIB said. Crew transfer to and from the space station, maximized for safety, period. There's no reason in the world that should cost $12 billion."

Whether NASA plans to make the OSP a simple craft dedicated to a simple purpose -- rotating crews and shuttling small amounts of cargo to the ISS -- is still up in the air. The question for Logsdon and others who think like him is: Will this project become something like a Congressional spending bill -- so overloaded with pork and wishful thinking that it can't even get off the ground?

FMI: www.nasa.gov