Narowing the Space Flight Gap

Sometime in the fall of 2010 the space shuttle will launch on its last mission. In the early Spring of 2015, barring unforeseen delays, the Orion space craft will become operational, available to take crews and supplies to the International Space Station. This constitutes a gap of four and a half years during which the United States will not be able to fly its own astronauts into space. That worries folks at NASA, members of Congress, and others concerned with the course of the US civil space program.

For four and a half years it looks like the United States will be dependent on other countries, primarily Russia, to fly American astronauts to the International Space Station. Because of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's ambitions to make his country a power to be reckoned with again, relations between the United States and Russia have become rather frosty. For almost half a decade, Russia could cut off America's access to space at a whim.

Even though space supporters in Washington recognize this as an intolerable state of affairs, they have so far been able to do little about it. A bipartisan effort by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas, and Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland, to add a billion dollars to NASA's budget to help narrow the four and a half year gap passed the Senate. However the effort appears likely to fail in conference with the House. In any case, the Bush Administration is taking a very dim view of adding money to any budget, even of an agency it favors, without offsets elsewhere.

Another effort, led by Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican from Florida, would keep the shuttle orbiter fleet flying until the Orion is ready. On the surface this seems to be a mad idea. It takes about three billion dollars a year to keep the shuttle fleet operational. If the Congress cannot find the money to bring Orion closer to reality, how can it be expected to come up with six times the amount to keep the shuttle fleet flying? If Congress takes the money out of the Orion program, then the Orion is delayed, perhaps indefinitely, defeating the purpose of the exercise.

Even worse, the shuttle fleet, in order to fly past 2010, will need a major overhaul if it is to fly with an even modicum of safety. That overhaul would cost more untold billions of dollars. Dispensing with the overhaul would place the lives of astronauts at risk and create the real possibility of a third orbiter and crew being lost in some accident.

The question also remains whether technical or budget problems will delay the advent of the Orion even further. Orion would not be the first major space project to suffer delays because of unforeseen design problems. And there is always the possibility of politically caused budget short falls. That happened in January of 2007, when Congress handed NASA a half billion dollar short fall, delaying Orion four to six months.

As of early December, 2007, Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill and seems powerless to do so any time in the near future. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised to slash funding for the Orion, delaying its operational date five more years.

Is all, therefore, doom and gloom? Not necessarily.

Just over a year ago, NASA chose two companies for its Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) program. These were Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) and Rocket Plane/Kistler (RP/K). The plan was to dole out five hundred million dollars to these companies for the next three years or so, based on the achievement of certain benchmarks. These benchmarks included raising funds in the capital investment markets, The goal of COTS was for the two companies to build prototype space craft capable of delivering crews and cargo to the International Space Station. A second phase of the COTS program would consist of a competition for a contract to actually deliver crews and cargo to ISS after 2010.

Subsequently, NASA dropped RP/K from the competition as it felt that the company had not achieved some of the required benchmarks, in particular raising private funds. The COTS competition is now reopened for the privilege of which company will get the remaining funds. In the meantime, SpaceX is forging ahead, having so far met all of its benchmarks. Many analysts believe that SpaceX has the best chance of building a private space craft capable of delivering people and cargo to the International Space Station.

What does this mean? This means that the impotence of the political class to narrow the "space flight gap" may not matter. Private industry may well come to the rescue and preserve American access to space, at least until Orion becomes operational.

Such a development would have profound consequences for the way the United States does space flight. For at least travel to and from Low Earth Orbit, NASA would become a customer of space transportation services and not an operator. Indeed it could be argued that Orion would not be needed for the resupply of the International Space Station, with a private firm already providing the service.

Perhaps, therefore, NASA could decide to bypass the development of the orbital Orion and go straight to one capable of going to the Moon. How much money would be saved is open to question, but perhaps enough would be to advance the return of explorers to the Moon by a few months, if not years. And for those who have been waiting over a generation for that event, it cannot come too soon.