Griffin Strongly Rejects Shift to EELV
Jan 8, 2009
Frank Morring, Jr. morring@aviationweek.com
It would be a mistake to drop development of the Ares I crew launch vehicle in favor of a human-rated Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), NASA Administrator Michael Griffin argued today in a detailed defense of the outgoing Bush administration's human spaceflight policy.
But he said it might be possible to close the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability by spending extra money to continue flying the space shuttle beyond 2010, and to accelerate Ares I development to make it available before 2015.
NASA is studying just what it would take to do that, Griffin told the Space Transportation Assn. He said the agency is drawing on separate efforts to estimate what it would take to continue flying the shuttle and to speed the Constellation Program's efforts to develop Ares I and the Orion crew exploration vehicle.
"It costs $3 billion a year to extend the shuttle, but one year's worth of that funding, if applied to Constellation, could bring Constellation in by about a year," Griffin said, noting that "NASA has never been asked the question... 'what combination of shuttle extension, international dependence and acceleration of Constellation would you use to prevent a gap in U.S. human spaceflight.'"
Griffin strongly rejected the idea that the Ares I/Orion development is so beset by technical problems that it would be better to drop the shuttle-derived launch vehicle in favor of a human-rated Atlas V or Delta IV. That approach would confine the U.S. to low-Earth orbit, he argued, while the Constellation vehicles are being developed with the intention of carrying humans back to the moon and on to near-Earth asteroids and Mars.
Within that larger effort, developing Ares I "is absolutely the cheapest way" to get humans to low-Earth orbit on a government system, Griffin said, citing President Eisenhower's caution against "unwarranted influence... by the military/industrial complex" in government decision-making.
"No matter what decisions we make, we can't make everybody happy," Griffin said.
Last fall Griffin ordered separate studies of what it would take to continue flying the shuttle after 2010 and to accelerate Ares I/Orion to close the gap in U.S. human access to space. If $2 billion - $3 billion of the overall $15 billion it would cost to continue flying the shuttle for five years was allocated to the Constellation hardware, the first flight of the new vehicles could be advanced about a year from the current target in 2015.
But Griffin cautioned that NASA's study of tackling the gap from both ends is ongoing, and beset with infrastructure issues like the need for the A2 test stand at Stennis Space Center to test both the space shuttle main engine and the J-2X engine that is the pacing item on the Ares I.
Extra money for Constellation could buy long-lead items like valves and thermal protection system hardware, he said, and fund an "Ares I-X Prime" flight test to demonstrate a high-altitude abort.
It remains an open question how the Obama administration will proceed. Like all political appointees, Griffin has submitted his resignation to the incoming president. But despite a lobbying effort to keep him in his post, he said he has not been told either way whether his pro-forma resignation will be accepted.
Ares 1 artist's concept: NASA
