Has NASA's Exploration Program Been Gamed by Ex-Astronaut to Benefit Contractor?
FYI,
"Flying Solo - NASA Should Embrace Principles of Free Enterprise"
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/simberg200604120715.asp
: That first April 12 heralded an era of human spaceflight, while
: the second one presented a false dawn of routine, low-cost human
: spaceflight. This quarter-century, however, may well be a period
: of transition to a true space age, amidst accelerating plans for
: private trips to space, and disarray within NASA's plans for a
: renewal of human lunar exploration.
: Unfortunately, there has been turmoil in the program lately. Last
: summer, NASA's new administrator, Dr. Mike Griffin, announced the
: agency's plans to carry out the president's vision. They seemingly
: ignored most of the transportation-architecture analysis that had
: been performed by several contractors under Administrator O'Keefe
: and Admiral Steidle, who was O'Keefe's pick to manage the program.
: Instead, Griffin announced "Apollo on steroids," which bore little
: resemblance to any of the recommended architectures. It required
: two new expendable launch vehicles — one for crew and one for
: heavy cargo — utilizing Shuttle hardware, such as the Solid Rocket
: Boosters (SRB) and external tank components, but not the orbiter
: itself. Former astronaut Scott Horowitz, who left NASA in October
: of 2004 to become an executive at ATK, the company that makes the
: SRBs, had been pushing this concept. Once NASA made the decision
: and granted the company a sole-source non-competitive contract, he
: left the company and went back to NASA, not quite a year later, to
: head up the exploration office. While there's no evidence to date
: of wrongdoing, this has presented an appearance of conflicts of
: interest.
: This appearance is all the more unfortunate now that the program
: has run into trouble, with the development cost estimates on the
: supposedly cheap Shuttle-derived Crew Launch Vehicle more than
: doubling recently, making it look like a "bait and switch." In
: addition, the lunar mission hardware has apparently outgrown the
: planned launchers, potentially requiring a radical redesign of
: NASA's desired architecture. In the wake of all this, NASA is
: going to have to decide if its plans are really "affordable"
: and "sustainable," as the president demanded.
: In the meantime, investors continue to pour money into the new
: private spaceflight industry, with hundreds of advance orders for
: personal rocket rides. NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation
: Services (COTS) program is moving ahead to encourage more
: commercial entities to provide space transportation, and the
: agency is moving more aggressively in offering prizes and other
: innovative procurement techniques.
: Perhaps, 45 years after a race initiated by a socialist-state
: space program, and 25 years after a failed attempt at our own
: socialist program, it's time for NASA to support even more
: vigorously the new space era. The space program should be based on
: the American values of free enterprise and individualism, not on
: NASA's failed 5, 10, and 25 year plans.
Apparently Horowitz has been gaming the exploration program for fun
and profit, meanwhile Griffin gets to try to justify dubious vehicle
architectures to a hostile Congress and media. Once again NASA blows
it by putting an astronaut in charge.
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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