View That Congress Will Slash Or Kill Spaceship Program Not Borne Out By Strong Budgetary Support, Officials Say

NASA Examining Ways To Begin Manned Orion-Ares Flights Sooner

The next-generation Ares spaceship rocket won’t be an unsafe lifter, and won’t easily be blown sideways into its launch tower, NASA leaders said.

While recent news reports have suggested that an errant wind from the south could blow the Ares rocket into the launch tower at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), those stories are "inaccurate and draw false conclusions," said Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator with the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. He spoke with several space journalists in a teleconference. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Oct. 27, 2008.)

Any design problems that could leave the rocket vulnerable to cross-winds "could be avoided," Cooke said, adding that he wanted to "set the record straight" that the Ares rocket will be crafted with "the safest design we can that answers the requirement and provides the best performance for our problem," to yield a competent lifter propelling the future Orion capsule, or crew exploration vehicle, into space.

Ares 1 rockets will be able to use a thrust vector control system on the first stage to steer away from the launch pad tower, should winds arise, or use reduced wind constraints (barring launch if winds are expected that are stronger than a certain level) that NASA imposes as a condition of launch for any shuttle liftoff.

It would take a wind from one direction, the south, that would be a robust 24 knots or higher to cause problems. Winds that strong occur only about 0.3 percent of the time at KSC.

Safety and mission assurance are major goals for the Constellation Program that will develop Orion, Ares, and the Altair lunar lander, Cooke said. That system will succeed the current space shuttle fleet that President Bush ordered to retire in 2010. Orion won’t have its first manned flight until 2015, leaving NASA to depend on buying rides from Russia.

In a recent preliminary design review, many issues were thoroughly discussed, with ample opportunity for any concerns to be raised, Cooke said. That review involved 1,100 reviewers from across the space agency, and outside it from the Department of Defense and industry.

Those issues included thrust oscillation, or extreme vibration during liftoff and ascent of the Orion-Ares system, briefers said. Proof of concept testing is underway on actively controlled reaction mass actuators on the aft end of the first stage. They actively cancel the vibration oscillation that otherwise could hit the astronaut crew. There is a checkpoint planned for this next month. As well, the crosswinds issue, or vehicle drift at launch, also was debated.

The review participants settled on a "valid and straightforward path to resolving those" issues, Cooke related, and a 31 member review board unanimously decided that "Ares should go forward," while working through outstanding issues.

Other canards involving untrue assertions are that the preliminary design review gave the Ares design a low C grade, and that there has been a revolt underway among astronauts who would have to fly on the Orion-Ares vehicle, briefers said. Rather, the astronaut office has participated in the program, and has concurred in all major decisions over three years.

"The astronaut office has been involved with this design before the Ares project was stood up," and is pleased with the development and design of Ares 1, said Brent Jett, flight crew operations director and an astronaut. "We consider ourselves part of the team." Astronauts also have had input on what level of vibration during launch and ascent would be appropriate.

This program isn’t some barely begun effort, but rather has been running for about three years, Jeff Hanley, the Constellation program manager, said. There are multiple prime contractors, and "real hardware is on its way to KFC right now."

Orion-Ares Twice As Safe

Briefers said that the Orion-Ares spaceship system will be twice as safe as the current space shuttle fleet, which has had two accidents that killed a total 14 crew members, buttressing a view expressed earlier by a top contractor official . (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Oct. 13, 2008.)

As far as allegations that a chance wind might blow Ares sideways into the tower are concerned, "everybody’s entitled to an opinion, but I think you’ve got to stick to facts of engineering and project management," said Steve Cook, Ares project manager.

If someone thinks that there is some basic flaw in the Ares design, that criticism comes after the design and development program is three years down the road, Steve Cook said. To decide now that the Ares design is inherently not flight-worthy, "You’d basically back yourself up three years and start over again," he said.

Three years ago, in fact, those beginning to make decisions about Ares performed many assessments on various options, he added. "The Ares family was shown to be twice as safe for the crew and 25 percent lower cost than the" Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, or EELV, type of lifter. They are supplied by a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] and The Boeing Co. [BA].

Both the Atlas V (legacy Lockheed) and Delta IV (historically Boeing) lifters would have required "a performance bump" to be able to deal with a mission abort capability, and for hauling heavy lunar-mission payloads aloft, Steve Cook said.

Not only would starting over from scratch on Ares cost three years of lost time, it also would cost substantial money, he asserted. "It would cost a whole lot more now, three years in, to start over," he said.

He emphasized that the Ares will be a family of rockets, including the Ares I to loft Orion into space, and the heavy-lifting Ares V to take giant payloads to orbit that will be required for missions to the moon.

While there are rumors on Capitol Hill that Ares may be on the budgetary chopping block next year, that certainly hasn’t been reflected in the fiscal 2009 NASA funding and authorization measures, according to Hanley.

They’ve been wonderfully supportive of Constellation and NASA’s [desire] top move forward with the exploration program," Hanley said.

Many lawmakers "recognize the difficulty of shuttle retirement, and the [five year] gap being a great concern to all of us," he said. "I don’t see any indication, just at my level … that there’s anything but robust support for Constellation," he concluded.

NASA, in the Constellation Program, is leading development of the Orion space capsule by Lockheed. Orion and the Altair lunar lander will be boosted by the Ares rocket that will have various components developed by Boeing, Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].

Hanley noted that the program is moving from blueprints to hard metal reality, with the Ares 1-X set for a test next year — perhaps July 12 — at Kennedy, and a test set for next year at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., of the launch abort system motor. That is a small rocket that will be mounted atop the Orion space capsule, ready to fire and whisk astronauts up and away from trouble if a serious problem erupts in Ares.

In the Ares upper stage, the J2X engine is in a critical design review now, he noted. And much tooling for manufacturing for the upper stage and for the Orion spacecraft is either on order or in early manufacturing testing.

A 360-foot-tall tower at Marshall Space Flight Center is being reconfigured from space shuttle setups to supporting Ares 1, with ground vibration tests set for 2011. A demonstration motor 1 test is planned next summer. Casting of a motor first segment is set for today. Drogue parachute testing occurred late in the summer, and more testing is set for January. And the upper stage engine will be in critical design review Nov. 13. There are components of the first full-up engine in production now, including pump machinery, gas generator, main injector, igniter hardware, main combustion chamber hardware, and nozzle hardware. All of that will go into the first full-up development engine in September 2010.

Budget Problems

True, NASA is challenged in the current fiscal 2009 by the fact that it is operating under a continuing budget resolution (CR), which freezes funding at the old fiscal 2008 level, but Hanley said. "We believe we’ve planned for that. … It’s going to be very tight maneuvering through FY09, but we have a plan to get there, if the duration of the CR what we expect it to be." Some observers have said the CR likely will continue in effect until a new Congress, to be elected by voters at the polls tomorrow, takes office in January. If so, then the new Congress could pass a fiscal 2009 budget appropriations bill providing increased funding for NASA, running from next winter to Sept. 30 next year.

But if the new Congress doesn’t take that action, and the CR continues in effect until Sept. 30, NASA and its programs will be damaged, receiving only the old fiscal 2008 levels.

Accelerating Orion-Ares

NASA also is planning a swift response if the president and Congress elected tomorrow should ask next year that NASA speed up the start of manned Orion flights, so that they begin earlier than 2015, Hanley said. That would reduce the half-decade-long gap between the last space shuttle flights and the first Orion manned flight.

However, it now is so late in the development cycle that it is unlikely that Orion could begin manned flights in 2013 or earlier.

Officials last week conducted an Orion systems baseline review last week, a milestone on the path toward a later preliminary design review, he said.

Ares V is formally entering into the formulation phase, with acquisitions coming up later this year and early next year, Steve Cook said.

Ares I is moving into the final design, production and ramp-up, and Ares I flight hardware is being delivered to Cape Canaveral, Fla.