NASA sets its sights on a new way to go

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/01/news/nasa.php
NASA sets its sights on a new way to go
By William J. Broad The New York Times

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2005


NEW YORK For its next generation of space shuttles, NASA has decided to
abandon the futuristic design principles that went into the current model
and rearrange the shuttle's parts into a safer, stronger, more powerful
family of traditional rockets, space agency officials and private experts
say.

The plan features two rockets that would separate the jobs of hauling
people and cargo into orbit and follow the customary approach of putting
the payloads on top - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines
and falling debris.

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the
shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in
theory speeding its completion and reducing its price.

"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages, as opposed to
starting from a clean *** of paper," NASA's new administrator, Michael
Griffin, said last week.

While public mention of the plan might seem like a ploy to take attention
from NASA's current troubles, it began in late April when Griffin, in
office for just days, quietly enlisted teams of federal and private
aerospace experts to visualize the post-shuttle era.

The plan is to be unveiled later this month. Its outlines were gleaned from
interviews and reviews of trade reports, congressional testimony and
official statements.

On Friday, Griffin stressed the plan's safety, telling shuttle reporters
that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to
avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed Columbia two and a half years ago
and threatened Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel
tank shortly after liftoff.

"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the
tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff
all day long."

Supporters say the plan will let astronauts move expeditiously back into
the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet,
and do so fairly quickly by drawing on shuttle parts and the contractors
who make them.

"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and
former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview.
"It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an
amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."

The question of what follows the shuttle gained urgency last week when the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, surprised by the continuing
foam dangers, suspended all further shuttle flights. It was foam hitting a
wing that doomed Columbia and its seven astronauts, and solving the foam
problem became one of NASA's main tasks to make flying the shuttle safer.

Even though Discovery's foam fluttered off harmlessly in thin air at high
altitude, it showed that the problem persisted.

The new plan sidesteps the foam threat and features many other advantages,
backers say. The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not
people, would measure about 350 feet, or 106 meters, tall, rivaling a
35-story building and the Saturn-5 rockets that sent astronauts to the
moon. A smaller version would carry the crew aloft but still dwarf the
shuttle. (The orbiter, with two booster rockets and an external fuel tank,
stands 184 feet high, like an 18-story building.)

Gone entirely from the plan are spaceships that look like airplanes,
marking a fundamental shift in NASA's design philosophy. Both rockets would
put their payloads, either humans or cargo, in capsules at the top -
standard practice throughout the space age up until the shuttle era, but
quite different from how the orbiter hangs on the shuttle's external fuel
tank.

A main advantage, supporters say, is that the big rocket could lift five or
six times more cargo than the shuttle (roughly 100 tons versus 20 tons),
making it the world's most powerful space vehicle. In theory it would be
strong enough to haul into orbit whole spaceships destined for the moon,
Mars and beyond.

As important, officials and private experts say, the small rocket for
astronauts would be at least 10 times safer than the problematic shuttle,
whose odds of disaster are estimated at roughly 1 in 100. The crew capsule
atop the rocket would rendezvous in orbit with gear and spaceships that the
bigger rocket ferried aloft.

"It's safe, simple and soon," said Horowitz, an industry executive since he
left the astronaut corps in October. "And it should cost less money" than
the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to
slash expenses, but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.

"We need to get this as simple and affordable as possible," Horowitz said,
"because there's a lot of other things we need to spend our money on when
it comes to exploration." So is NASA going back to the future? "You can
say, 'Hey, that looks pretty retro,"' Horowitz said of the new vehicles.

But he drew an analogy to passenger jets from decades ago and those of
today. "They look the same," he said, "but are completely different."

The shuttle-derived plan is meant to quicken President George W. Bush's
goal of revitalizing human space exploration and manages to completely
upend the strategy of NASA's previous administrator, Sean O'Keefe. He
wanted to discard the shuttle in favor of military rockets, which would
have required costly upgrades to make them safe for humans. And their
payloads would have been relatively small, requiring strings of multiple
rocket launchings.

Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of the Mars Society, a
private group based in Indian Hills, Colorado, praised the new plan as
visionary and faulted O'Keefe's because it would soon have dismantled the
shuttle's coast-to-coast network of contractors.

Major parts of the new plan grew out of the Columbia disaster two and a
half years ago, Horowitz said. He told of how he and two fellow astronauts
were in Lufkin, Texas, helping recover debris when, one night, they began
brainstorming about safer alternatives to the shuttle.

The threesome ended up endorsing the traditional idea of putting astronauts
atop the rocket instead of on its side - in other words, as far as possible
from the dangers below. They also envisioned an escape system that would
lift the crew capsule out of harm's way if serious trouble arose.

Later, back at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Horowitz was leading a
team to look into the matter when Bush, in January 2004, announced a
national push to "extend a human presence across our solar system."

Now, needing a bigger crew vehicle and a more powerful launcher, Horowitz
hit on the idea of using the shuttle's booster rocket as a first stage. He
did the math and found it ideal. Moreover, the booster rocket was already
approved for human flight and - despite its role in the 1986 Challenger
disaster - had earned an excellent safety record.

The second stage of the crew rocket would feature a J-2 engine, which in
the 1960's and 1970's helped propel the astronauts to the moon.

He said industry studies put the risk of catastrophic failure for the newly
envisioned crew rocket at between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 3,000 - a level of
safety that NASA previously only dreamed of. "It's never going to be like
driving your car," Horowitz said. "But it's a huge step in the right
direction."

NEW YORK For its next generation of space shuttles, NASA has decided to
abandon the futuristic design principles that went into the current model
and rearrange the shuttle's parts into a safer, stronger, more powerful
family of traditional rockets, space agency officials and private experts
say.

The plan features two rockets that would separate the jobs of hauling
people and cargo into orbit and follow the customary approach of putting
the payloads on top - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines
and falling debris.

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the
shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in
theory speeding its completion and reducing its price.

"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages, as opposed to
starting from a clean *** of paper," NASA's new administrator, Michael
Griffin, said last week.

While public mention of the plan might seem like a ploy to take attention
from NASA's current troubles, it began in late April when Griffin, in
office for just days, quietly enlisted teams of federal and private
aerospace experts to visualize the post-shuttle era.

The plan is to be unveiled later this month. Its outlines were gleaned from
interviews and reviews of trade reports, congressional testimony and
official statements.

On Friday, Griffin stressed the plan's safety, telling shuttle reporters
that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to
avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed Columbia two and a half years ago
and threatened Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel
tank shortly after liftoff.

"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the
tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff
all day long."

Supporters say the plan will let astronauts move expeditiously back into
the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet,
and do so fairly quickly by drawing on shuttle parts and the contractors
who make them.

"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and
former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview.
"It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an
amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."

The question of what follows the shuttle gained urgency last week when the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, surprised by the continuing
foam dangers, suspended all further shuttle flights. It was foam hitting a
wing that doomed Columbia and its seven astronauts, and solving the foam
problem became one of NASA's main tasks to make flying the shuttle safer.

Even though Discovery's foam fluttered off harmlessly in thin air at high
altitude, it showed that the problem persisted.

The new plan sidesteps the foam threat and features many other advantages,
backers say. The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not
people, would measure about 350 feet, or 106 meters, tall, rivaling a
35-story building and the Saturn-5 rockets that sent astronauts to the
moon. A smaller version would carry the crew aloft but still dwarf the
shuttle. (The orbiter, with two booster rockets and an external fuel tank,
stands 184 feet high, like an 18-story building.)

Gone entirely from the plan are spaceships that look like airplanes,
marking a fundamental shift in NASA's design philosophy. Both rockets would
put their payloads, either humans or cargo, in capsules at the top -
standard practice throughout the space age up until the shuttle era, but
quite different from how the orbiter hangs on the shuttle's external fuel
tank.

A main advantage, supporters say, is that the big rocket could lift five or
six times more cargo than the shuttle (roughly 100 tons versus 20 tons),
making it the world's most powerful space vehicle. In theory it would be
strong enough to haul into orbit whole spaceships destined for the moon,
Mars and beyond.

As important, officials and private experts say, the small rocket for
astronauts would be at least 10 times safer than the problematic shuttle,
whose odds of disaster are estimated at roughly 1 in 100. The crew capsule
atop the rocket would rendezvous in orbit with gear and spaceships that the
bigger rocket ferried aloft.

"It's safe, simple and soon," said Horowitz, an industry executive since he
left the astronaut corps in October. "And it should cost less money" than
the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to
slash expenses, but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.

"We need to get this as simple and affordable as possible," Horowitz said,
"because there's a lot of other things we need to spend our money on when
it comes to exploration." So is NASA going back to the future? "You can
say, 'Hey, that looks pretty retro,"' Horowitz said of the new vehicles.

But he drew an analogy to passenger jets from decades ago and those of
today. "They look the same," he said, "but are completely different."

The shuttle-derived plan is meant to quicken President George W. Bush's
goal of revitalizing human space exploration and manages to completely
upend the strategy of NASA's previous administrator, Sean O'Keefe. He
wanted to discard the shuttle in favor of military rockets, which would
have required costly upgrades to make them safe for humans. And their
payloads would have been relatively small, requiring strings of multiple
rocket launchings.

Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of the Mars Society, a
private group based in Indian Hills, Colorado, praised the new plan as
visionary and faulted O'Keefe's because it would soon have dismantled the
shuttle's coast-to-coast network of contractors.

Major parts of the new plan grew out of the Columbia disaster two and a
half years ago, Horowitz said. He told of how he and two fellow astronauts
were in Lufkin, Texas, helping recover debris when, one night, they began
brainstorming about safer alternatives to the shuttle.

The threesome ended up endorsing the traditional idea of putting astronauts
atop the rocket instead of on its side - in other words, as far as possible
from the dangers below. They also envisioned an escape system that would
lift the crew capsule out of harm's way if serious trouble arose.

Later, back at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Horowitz was leading a
team to look into the matter when Bush, in January 2004, announced a
national push to "extend a human presence across our solar system."

Now, needing a bigger crew vehicle and a more powerful launcher, Horowitz
hit on the idea of using the shuttle's booster rocket as a first stage. He
did the math and found it ideal. Moreover, the booster rocket was already
approved for human flight and - despite its role in the 1986 Challenger
disaster - had earned an excellent safety record.

The second stage of the crew rocket would feature a J-2 engine, which in
the 1960's and 1970's helped propel the astronauts to the moon.

He said industry studies put the risk of catastrophic failure for the newly
envisioned crew rocket at between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 3,000 - a level of
safety that NASA previously only dreamed of. "It's never going to be like
driving your car," Horowitz said. "But it's a huge step in the right
direction."

NEW YORK For its next generation of space shuttles, NASA has decided to
abandon the futuristic design principles that went into the current model
and rearrange the shuttle's parts into a safer, stronger, more powerful
family of traditional rockets, space agency officials and private experts
say.

The plan features two rockets that would separate the jobs of hauling
people and cargo into orbit and follow the customary approach of putting
the payloads on top - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines
and falling debris.

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the
shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in
theory speeding its completion and reducing its price.

"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages, as opposed to
starting from a clean *** of paper," NASA's new administrator, Michael
Griffin, said last week.

While public mention of the plan might seem like a ploy to take attention
from NASA's current troubles, it began in late April when Griffin, in
office for just days, quietly enlisted teams of federal and private
aerospace experts to visualize the post-shuttle era.

The plan is to be unveiled later this month. Its outlines were gleaned from
interviews and reviews of trade reports, congressional testimony and
official statements.

On Friday, Griffin stressed the plan's safety, telling shuttle reporters
that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to
avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed Columbia two and a half years ago
and threatened Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel
tank shortly after liftoff.

"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the
tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff
all day long."

Supporters say the plan will let astronauts move expeditiously back into
the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet,
and do so fairly quickly by drawing on shuttle parts and the contractors
who make them.

"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and
former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview.
"It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an
amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."

The question of what follows the shuttle gained urgency last week when the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, surprised by the continuing
foam dangers, suspended all further shuttle flights. It was foam hitting a
wing that doomed Columbia and its seven astronauts, and solving the foam
problem became one of NASA's main tasks to make flying the shuttle safer.

Even though Discovery's foam fluttered off harmlessly in thin air at high
altitude, it showed that the problem persisted.

The new plan sidesteps the foam threat and features many other advantages,
backers say. The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not
people, would measure about 350 feet, or 106 meters, tall, rivaling a
35-story building and the Saturn-5 rockets that sent astronauts to the
moon. A smaller version would carry the crew aloft but still dwarf the
shuttle. (The orbiter, with two booster rockets and an external fuel tank,
stands 184 feet high, like an 18-story building.)

Gone entirely from the plan are spaceships that look like airplanes,
marking a fundamental shift in NASA's design philosophy. Both rockets would
put their payloads, either humans or cargo, in capsules at the top -
standard practice throughout the space age up until the shuttle era, but
quite different from how the orbiter hangs on the shuttle's external fuel
tank.

A main advantage, supporters say, is that the big rocket could lift five or
six times more cargo than the shuttle (roughly 100 tons versus 20 tons),
making it the world's most powerful space vehicle. In theory it would be
strong enough to haul into orbit whole spaceships destined for the moon,
Mars and beyond.

As important, officials and private experts say, the small rocket for
astronauts would be at least 10 times safer than the problematic shuttle,
whose odds of disaster are estimated at roughly 1 in 100. The crew capsule
atop the rocket would rendezvous in orbit with gear and spaceships that the
bigger rocket ferried aloft.

"It's safe, simple and soon," said Horowitz, an industry executive since he
left the astronaut corps in October. "And it should cost less money" than
the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to
slash expenses, but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.

"We need to get this as simple and affordable as possible," Horowitz said,
"because there's a lot of other things we need to spend our money on when
it comes to exploration." So is NASA going back to the future? "You can
say, 'Hey, that looks pretty retro,"' Horowitz said of the new vehicles.

But he drew an analogy to passenger jets from decades ago and those of
today. "They look the same," he said, "but are completely different."

The shuttle-derived plan is meant to quicken President George W. Bush's
goal of revitalizing human space exploration and manages to completely
upend the strategy of NASA's previous administrator, Sean O'Keefe. He
wanted to discard the shuttle in favor of military rockets, which would
have required costly upgrades to make them safe for humans. And their
payloads would have been relatively small, requiring strings of multiple
rocket launchings.

Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of the Mars Society, a
private group based in Indian Hills, Colorado, praised the new plan as
visionary and faulted O'Keefe's because it would soon have dismantled the
shuttle's coast-to-coast network of contractors.

Major parts of the new plan grew out of the Columbia disaster two and a
half years ago, Horowitz said. He told of how he and two fellow astronauts
were in Lufkin, Texas, helping recover debris when, one night, they began
brainstorming about safer alternatives to the shuttle.

The threesome ended up endorsing the traditional idea of putting astronauts
atop the rocket instead of on its side - in other words, as far as possible
from the dangers below. They also envisioned an escape system that would
lift the crew capsule out of harm's way if serious trouble arose.

Later, back at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Horowitz was leading a
team to look into the matter when Bush, in January 2004, announced a
national push to "extend a human presence across our solar system."

Now, needing a bigger crew vehicle and a more powerful launcher, Horowitz
hit on the idea of using the shuttle's booster rocket as a first stage. He
did the math and found it ideal. Moreover, the booster rocket was already
approved for human flight and - despite its role in the 1986 Challenger
disaster - had earned an excellent safety record.

The second stage of the crew rocket would feature a J-2 engine, which in
the 1960's and 1970's helped propel the astronauts to the moon.

He said industry studies put the risk of catastrophic failure for the newly
envisioned crew rocket at between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 3,000 - a level of
safety that NASA previously only dreamed of. "It's never going to be like
driving your car," Horowitz said. "But it's a huge step in the right
direction."

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